U.S. Civil War: Battle of Fredericksburg

The Cincinnati Commercial noted, "It can hardly be in human nature for men to show more valor or generals to manifest less judgment than were perceptible on our side that day." 160 years later, that still pretty much sums up the US Civil War’s Battle of Fredericksburg from the Union side. Yet, the fact is that, as bad as it was, and it was truly awful, it did not provide the South with any lasting strategic advantage. In fact, within seven months, the tables would turn after their own costly frontal assault.

Lloyd W Klein explains.

Union soldiers from Franklin's ‘Left Grand Division’ charge across the railroad during the Battle of Fredericksburg.

General Robert E. Lee's survival at Antietam was remarkable. McClellan missed numerous opportunities to create total disaster for Lee's army, and Lee likely recognized some fundamental errors in his strategy. Yet, Lee emerged with his army intact, high morale, and a new adversary.

After McClellan's lack of aggressive pursuit post-Antietam, he was relieved of command on November 5. His replacement, Major General Ambrose E. Burnside, assumed command on November 9, under pressure from Washington to act swiftly. Burnside devised a plan to reach Richmond ahead of Lee's forces.

Situated near Warrenton, Virginia, Burnside was west of Richmond and Washington, at approximately the same latitude as Manassas. Continuing on the roads from there would lead to Culpeper and Charlottesville, necessitating the crossing of both the Rapidan and the Rappahannock Rivers.

Burnside’s Plan

Burnside proposed abandoning the southwest movement of the army, which led away from any specific target. Instead, he planned to move southeast rapidly toward the lower Rappahannock River, positioning the Union army at Falmouth, just across the Rappahannock River from Fredericksburg. From there, he aimed to launch a direct attack on Richmond, avoiding Lee's forces in Culpeper, and positioning himself between Lee and the direct route to Richmond. On paper, Burnside's plan held great promise, but successful execution hinged on speed.
The direct route from Warrenton to Fredericksburg was approximately 35-40 miles. It was a single country road in late Fall, presenting logistical challenges in organizing troops and supplies. However, Burnside managed to move his 100,000-man army to Falmouth on the north bank of the Rappahannock in just two days. Fredericksburg lay opposite Falmouth, a riverport town.

Lee had conducted a cautious retreat from Sharpsburg, ensuring his rear was secure in case McClellan launched an attack, which never materialized. This route brought Lee closer to the Shenandoah Valley than to Richmond. Lee, positioned at Culpeper, had a slightly shorter distance of about 35 miles to cover to reach Fredericksburg, but he had to cross the Rappahannock River. Thus, a race was on between the two armies.

When Burnside assumed command, he found himself in a strategic predicament. McClellan had left him in a remote location with a supply line that relied on the Orange and Alexandria Railroad, which extended to Culpeper Court House before heading east to Orange and Charlottesville. This placed Burnside far to the west of his desired destination, and there was no established supply line to support a rapid eastward movement. This situation raised concerns for Lincoln and Halleck, given that Burnside, a relative rookie as a general, aimed to move faster than his army had ever moved before, and he faced a cunning adversary who could launch attacks along the way.
However, Burnside devised a clever plan to address this challenge. Knowing that Longstreet was positioned at Culpeper, and Jackson was on his right flank, Burnside recognized that Longstreet had a shorter distance to reach Fredericksburg once his movement was detected.

The leadership in Washington believed that the primary target should not be Richmond itself, but rather Lee's army. They wanted Burnside to attack Longstreet at Culpeper while Jackson was separated from him. Burnside believed that this move was quite obvious and that Lee would anticipate it. He envisioned a scenario similar to the Second Battle of Manassas, with Jackson launching a flank attack against him. Burnside proposed feigning an attack on Culpeper, which would hold Lee in that area just long enough for Burnside to reach the eastern side of the Rappahannock River. He began moving supplies to Falmouth, located just north of Fredericksburg and close to the Potomac River. The plan was to reach Falmouth swiftly, resupply, and have a pontoon bridge constructed across the river before Lee could arrive. Halleck disagreed with Burnside’s plan but left it to President Lincoln, who chose to go along with it.

Crossing the Rappahannock River

Pontoon bridges have been essential in warfare for centuries. These floating bridges use floats or shallow-draft boats to support a continuous deck for infantry, artillery, cavalry, and supply wagons. The buoyancy of the supports limits their maximum load. Strong currents and storms can disrupt these bridges, making their use typically temporary, just long enough to cross a river. Connecting the bridge to the shore requires designing approaches that are not too steep, prevent bank erosion, and accommodate movements during changes in water levels (such as tides). During the Civil War, both armies commonly used pontoon bridges. They played a crucial role in key crossings, such as Grant's crossings of the James and Mississippi Rivers. Lee's use of a pontoon bridge over the Potomac River during the Gettysburg campaign is another notable example.

The plan for a pontoon bridge wasn't particularly complex, as it required old boats and wooden planks. When Burnside initiated his plans for this campaign, he requisitioned these materials on November 7, submitting his plan to Halleck. The plan was sent to Brig. Gen. George Washington Cullum, the chief of staff in Washington, on November 9. The pontoon trains were deemed ready to move on November 14.

However, when the Union Army commenced its march on November 15 and the first units arrived in Falmouth by November 17, they found no bridges built, no materials for construction, and no engineers to undertake the task. The pontoon materials were ready to move on November 14, except for the absence of the 270 horses needed to move them. Burnside was unaware until he arrived that most of the building materials had not been transported. Burnside arrived in Falmouth by November 19, but the pontoons that he planned to use to cross the Rappahannock were delayed because some functionary in Washington had failed to send the pontoons when Burnside asked for them. They were supposed to be there when he got there. Communications between Burnside's staff engineer Cyrus B. Comstock and the Engineer Brigade commander Daniel P. Woodbury indicate that Burnside had assumed the bridging was en route to Washington based on orders given on November 7.

So, when General Sumner arrived in Falmouth on November 17th, he ordered his men to race to Fredericksburg and cross the river. Except when he got there, there was no bridge. There were only 500 troops in the town and occupying the commanding heights to the west. Burnside became concerned that early winter rains would make the fording points unusable; that might make Sumner vulnerable, he could be cut off. Instead, Burnside ordered Sumner to wait in Falmouth.

Lee didn't ascertain Burnside's movement early enough to launch an attack. The part of the plan that Halleck had expressed concern about worked out favorably. Lee believed that Burnside would outpace him and cross the Rappahannock River first, prompting Lee to prepare for defense along the North Anna River instead. This plan, however, was met with dissatisfaction from President Davis, who considered it too close to Richmond . Lee recognized that Burnside had beat him to the Rappahannock – and now found himself on the wrong side of the river. Instead of moving to the North Anna, he had Longstreet move instead to the heights above the river on its south side above the town.

The materials for one bridge arrived November 25, 8 days after the Union army. This is truly a failure of the Union Army quartermaster department. The fact that Burnside ended up taking the blame for this is unfair; there was plenty of blame for everyone. Burnside was looking for a place to ford the river. The arrival of the bridge was much too late to cross the river without a battle. He knew only half of Lee’s army was across the river. Still, Burnside had an opportunity because at that time only half of Lee's army had arrived and were not yet dug in. Had Burnside acted more expeditiously and attacked Longstreet sooner, he might have won a victory before Jackson arrived. Part of his reluctance to move was his fear that if only some of his army crossed, an attack by Longstreet might be decisive.  It has always intrigued me that Burnside had delayed his attack at Antietam across the bridge and was criticized for not finding fords downstream; and 3 months later, he is criticized for the delays in looking for fords downstream.

Longstreet's arrival on November 23 marked a critical moment in the lead-up to the Battle of Fredericksburg. General Lee strategically positioned his forces, placing them on the commanding ridge known as Marye's Heights, west of the town. This defensive formation included Anderson's division on the far left, McLaws positioned directly behind the town, and Pickett's and Hood's divisions anchoring the right flank. Lee recognized the significance of holding this high ground.

Meanwhile, Lee had dispatched a message for General Stonewall Jackson on November 26, anticipating the need for his Second Corps. Jackson, known for his remarkable swiftness, had already foreseen the call and initiated a forced march of his troops from Winchester starting on November 22. They covered as much as 20 miles a day, a remarkable feat considering the challenging terrain. Jackson's timely arrival at Lee's headquarters on November 29 reinforced the Confederate position.

As General Burnside awaited the construction of crucial pontoon bridges, General Lee organized his army for the impending battle. Lieutenant General James Longstreet's wing shifted eastward from Culpeper, securing a formidable position on Marye's Heights, which offered a commanding view of Fredericksburg from the western vantage point. To the south, Lieutenant General Stonewall Jackson's troops entrenched themselves along a line stretching from Prospect Hill to Hamilton's Crossing, a strategic position four miles south of the town. 

However, as Burnside's wait for the bridges extended, he missed a valuable window of opportunity. Lee recognized this delay and anticipated that Burnside would eventually attempt to cross the Rappahannock River. Lt. Gen. James Longstreet’s wing moved east from Culpeper, and Lt. Gen. Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson’s men hurried toward the Rappahannock from the Shenandoah Valley. Longstreet took up a position on Marye’s Heights, overlooking Fredericksburg from the west. To the south, Jackson’s men were entrenched in a line stretching over Prospect Hill and onto Hamilton’s Crossing, four miles from the town. Burnside had squandered his opportunity. During this delay, Lee anticipated Burnside’s crossing the Rappahannock. This strategic maneuvering and positioning by both sides set the stage for the dramatic events that would unfold in the Battle of Fredericksburg.

Originally, Burnside had planned to cross east of Fredericksburg at Skinker's Neck, a shallow marshy area downstream from the town. However, upon Jackson's arrival and Confederate movements in that area, Burnside changed his plan to cross at the town itself, hoping to surprise the enemy. When Jackson arrived, he placed DH Hill and Early in that area when he received notification of Union gunboats there. Union spy balloons detected this movement, so Burnside was aware of it. Since it seemed that Lee had moved toward his right, then a smarter place to cross would be to Lee’s left, so he decided to cross at the town itself, thinking it would surprise the enemy.

Union engineers finally began to assemble 6 pontoon bridges on December 11. They were designated to be placed as 2 north of the town center, 1 south of the town center, and 3 more south. In the pre-dawn hours, a regiment of Union engineers began assembling the pontoon bridges opposite the town. Confederate riflemen harassed the engineers and slowed their progress.

The delay between November 25 and December 11 was partly due to the weather. But several years later, Halleck reported to Stanton that he had never approved of the plan, and had suggested using the fords upriver instead. After the war. Burnside wrote that he had told Halleck that during the movement he wouldn’t be unable to receive telegraphic messages. I get the impression, reading these notes well after the fact, that Halleck just didn’t order things be done and Burnside didn’t think he had to be certain about this detail. https://civilwartalk.com/threads/why-were-burnsides-bridges-late-at-fredericksburg.7791/?amp=1

As Union forces under General Hunt positioned over 220 cannons on Stafford Heights, it seemed they held an impregnable advantage against any Confederate counterattack. In the late morning, the Union unleashed a formidable bombardment, This relentless shelling wreaked havoc, causing considerable damage to numerous buildings and instilling terror among the civilian population. After approximately four hours of intense bombardment, the engineers resumed their work on the pontoon bridges, but Confederate riflemen wasted no time in resuming their sharpshooting.

However, a significant challenge remained in the form of Confederate sharpshooters entrenched in the basements of buildings within Fredericksburg. It was then that General Hunt proposed a bold solution. He suggested that Burnside deploy infantry across the river to engage the sharpshooters directly, effectively proposing urban combat in the heart of Fredericksburg.

Faced with the bridging process grinding to a halt due to enemy fire, General Burnside authorized a daring plan to dislodge the Confederate snipers.

As the plan unfolded, 135 infantrymen from the 7th Michigan and the 19th Massachusetts courageously crowded into small boats, with the 20th Massachusetts following soon after. Colonel Norman Hall, a brigade commander from the nearby Second Corps, volunteered his brigade to row across the Rappahannock. Under enemy fire, these regiments successfully crossed the river and formed a skirmish line to eliminate the Confederate sharpshooters. While some Confederate soldiers surrendered, the fighting intensified as Union and Confederate forces clashed street by street throughout the town. Ultimately, the riflemen were driven from their positions on the riverbank.

By late afternoon, Sumner's Right Grand Division began its crossing at 4:30 p.m., although the bulk of his troops did not complete the crossing until December 12. Hooker's Center Grand Division followed on December 13, utilizing both the northern and southern bridges.

Union artillery unleashed over 5,000 shells upon the town and the ridges to the west, transforming Fredericksburg into a scene of destruction. By nightfall, four Union brigades occupied the town, engaging in looting on a scale hitherto unseen in the war, enraging General Lee, who likened their actions to the ancient Vandals.

December 12: The Slaughter Pen

On December 12, the remainder of Burnside's army successfully crossed the river and established their presence in Fredericksburg. As the evening developed, Burnside formulated a strategy to secure the areas surrounding the town. His plan involved utilizing the nearly 60,000 troops in Major General William B. Franklin's Left Grand Division to crush General Lee's southern flank, commanded by General Jackson. Simultaneously, the rest of Burnside's forces would maintain General Longstreet's position on Marye's Heights and provide support to Franklin if required.

However, the planning that evening left everyone in a state of uncertainty. Despite Burnside's verbal instructions, which outlined a primary attack by Franklin, supported by General Hooker on the southern flank, with General Sumner leading a secondary attack on the northern flank, his written orders on the morning of December 13 were vague and confusing to his subordinates. These orders did not reach Franklin until 7:15 or 7:45 a.m., and when they did, they differed from Franklin's expectations. Rather than ordering a full-scale assault by the entire grand division, Burnside instructed Franklin to maintain his position but send "a division at least" to seize Prospect Hill around Hamilton's Crossing. Simultaneously, Sumner was to send one division through the city and up Telegraph Road, with both flanks ready to commit their entire commands. Burnside appeared to anticipate that these limited attacks would intimidate Lee into withdrawal.

Franklin, who had initially advocated a vigorous assault, interpreted Burnside's order conservatively. Map inaccuracies further compounded the confusion. Interestingly, Burnside's use of the word "seize" conveyed less forcefulness in 19th-century military terminology than the command "to carry" the heights.

The attack finally began when General Reynolds led the way, selecting General George Meade to initiate the movement. However, substantial artillery fire from Pelham's Cavalry artillery and later Walker's artillery on Prospect Hill delayed Meade's advance until nearly 1 PM. The attack eventually gained momentum, but Jackson had concealed approximately 35,000 Confederate troops on a wooded ridge.

The battle on the southern end of the field, known as the Slaughter Pen, resulted in heavy casualties on both sides. General A.P. Hill's poor performance at Fredericksburg led to a significant portion of Confederate casualties in Jackson's corps. A triangular patch of woods extending beyond the railroad, swampy and dense with underbrush, created a 600-yard gap between the brigades of Brigadier Generals James H. Lane and James J. Archer. Brigadier General Maxcy Gregg's brigade was stationed approximately a quarter mile behind this vulnerable gap. Meade's 1st Brigade entered the gap, ascended the railroad embankment, and turned right into the underbrush, catching Lane's brigade in the flank. This maneuver enabled Meade to attack both Confederate brigades from the flank.

However, Gregg, for unknown reasons, ordered his troops not to fire, believing mistakenly that the approaching Union forces were friendly. It is suspected that his partial deafness may have prevented him from hearing the sounds of battle and gunfire. Tragically, he was struck in the spine by a minie ball and succumbed to his injuries two days later. As the situation escalated, Archer called for Gregg to send reinforcements, but by then, Gregg's brigade had suffered defeat. Early and Taliaferro moved their divisions to cover the gap, effectively halting Meade's advance. A counterattack by Early and a counter-counter charge by Union generals Gibbon and Birney eventually forced the Confederates to withdraw into the hills south of town. Had Franklin supported Meade with all of his men the gap might have led to a rout.

The main Union assault against Jackson initially achieved success. In an area later known as the Slaughter Pen, Major General George G. Meade's division briefly penetrated Jackson's line, posing a threat to the Confederate right. However, a lack of coordinated reinforcements and Jackson's resolute counterattack thwarted the Union effort. The battle resulted in heavy casualties on both sides, with neither gaining a significant advantage.

December 12: Marye’s Heights

On the northern end of the battlefield, Brig. Gen. William H. French's division of the II Corps stood ready to advance, despite facing a barrage of Confederate artillery fire raining down upon the fog-shrouded city of Fredericksburg. General Burnside had instructed Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner, the commander of the Right Grand Division, to send "a division or more" to secure the high ground west of the city. This move was initially seen as a diversionary tactic, with the main thrust of the Union assault expected to occur in the south. . General Burnside's orders to Maj. Gen. Edwin V. Sumner, commander of the Right Grand Division, was to send "a division or more" to seize the high ground to the west of the city, assuming that his assault on the southern end of the Confederate line would be the decisive action of the battle.

Marye’s Heights, a prominent geographic feature overlooking the river and the city, presented an imposing obstacle. The low ridge, composed of several hills separated by ravines, including Taylor's Hill, Stansbury Hill, Marye's Hill, and Willis Hill, rose 40–50 feet above the surrounding plain. This gives an impression that it’s not an especially steep approach. While the approach was relatively open, it was punctuated by scattered houses, fences, and gardens, hindering the movement of Union forces. To reach the base of the heights, Union soldiers had to leave the relative cover of the city, descend into a valley crossed by a water-filled canal ditch, and then ascend an exposed slope of 400 yards.

Close to the crest of the ridge, specifically Marye's Hill and Willis Hill, a narrow lane in a slight depression known as the Sunken Road was protected by a 4-foot stone wall, supplemented with log breastworks in some areas. Initially, McLaws had placed about 2,000 Confederate soldiers on the front line of Marye's Heights, with an additional 7,000 in reserve positions on the crest and behind the ridge. At the front of Longstreet's position, the Sunken Road was packed with Confederates three ranks deep. Confederate artillery covered the plain below, making it a deadly approach. General Longstreet had received assurance from his artillery commander, Lt. Col. Edward Porter Alexander, that they could effectively sweep the field with gunfire: "General, we cover that ground now so well that we will comb it as with a fine-tooth comb. A chicken could not live on that field when we open on it."

Burnside's original diversionary attack against Longstreet's defensive position behind the stone wall resulted in horrendous Union casualties. Wave after wave of Federal troops advanced across the open ground, only to be met with withering rifle and artillery fire from the strongly fortified Confederate position. Lee, witnessing the carnage, famously remarked, "It is well that war is so terrible. We should grow too fond of it."

The initial plan had been to distract Longstreet with this attack while the main effort took place elsewhere, but when the secondary engagement at the Slaughter Pen stalled, this ill-fated assault became the primary focus of the battle.

Sumner's Right Grand Division was the force behind the initial assault, which began at noon, kicking off a relentless sequence of attacks that persisted until nightfall. As Northern forces moved out of Fredericksburg, Longstreet's artillery rained destruction upon them. The Union troops encountered a perilous bottleneck at the canal ditch, crossed by only three narrow bridges. Once they surmounted this obstacle, they formed shallow battle lines, seeking cover behind a slight bluff that provided concealment but no protection.

The order for the final advance echoed across the field. The terrain beyond the canal ditch offered little cover, with few buildings and fences. Southern cannons wasted no time resuming their barrage on these exposed targets. As Federals covered about half the remaining distance, a torrent of bullets erupted from the Sunken Road, causing severe casualties. Survivors sought refuge behind a small depression in the ground or retreated to the safety of the canal ditch valley.

Darius Couch and the II Corps were at the forefront of this attack. His corps was ordered to assault the Confederate position at the base of Marye's Heights overlooking Fredericksburg. From the courthouse cupola, Couch watched as French's division, followed by Hancock's division and then Howard's, suffered heavy casualties. The II Corps alone sustained 4,000 casualties in this part of the battle. One may wonder why a flank attack was not attempted instead of a direct assault; in fact, Couch ordered Howard to march his division toward the right and flank the Confederate defenses, but the terrain did not permit such a maneuver; all such attempts were crowded back to the center.

Why Did Burnside order this attack?

The Assault on Marye's Heights resulted in a casualty rate estimated at 15-20% for Union troops, contributing to a total Union casualty count of 8,000. Although the assault was tactically devastating, it had minimal strategic impact on the war. It became the most one-sided Confederate victory in the war, yet it did not alter the overall trajectory of the conflict.

Several factors influenced Burnside's decision-making. There was a breakdown in communication and coordination among Union commanders. Burnside received reports of limited success in the diversionary attack on the Confederate right flank, leading him to believe that a more aggressive assault on Marye's Heights was needed to divert Confederate attention. Pressure to achieve a decisive victory and optimism may have clouded his judgment.

Burnside believed in his numerical advantage and hoped to dislodge the Confederate defenders through overwhelming force. Given the circumstances, Marye's Heights seemed the most promising target due to its proximity to the shelter of Fredericksburg and the less steep terrain.

While some subordinate commanders, including General William B. Franklin, expressed reservations, Burnside persisted in ordering piecemeal attacks. Hooker, Sumner, and several others told Burnside it was futile, but he continued to order piecemeal attacks

Aftermath

As darkness descended on the battlefield, strewn with the fallen and the wounded, it became evident that the Confederates had secured a decisive victory. The night resonated with the harrowing cries of the wounded, described as "weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear."

Burnside, undeterred by the grim outcome, issued orders to renew the assaults on December 14, even expressing a desire to personally lead them. However, his subordinates persuaded him against this perilous endeavor. On December 15, Burnside orchestrated a skillful retreat across the Rappahannock River, dismantling the bridges behind his army as they withdrew to Stafford Heights.

As darkness descended upon the battlefield, it revealed a haunting scene of devastation, strewn with the fallen and wounded. The cries of the wounded, described as "weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear," echoed through the night, serving as a grim testament to the horrors of war. The wounded soldiers who lay on the battlefield faced dire circumstances as there were limited means to evacuate them. Many had fallen in front of the Confederate lines, making any rescue attempt perilous and likely to result in even more casualties. Regrettably, many of the wounded likely succumbed to their injuries who might have been saved under different circumstances. Undoubtedly many of the wounded exsanguinated who might have been saved.

As a consequence of this tragedy, the role of Jonathan Letterman, appointed in June 1862 as the medical director of the Army of the Potomac, became pivotal. Letterman initiated a comprehensive overhaul of the Medical Service, armed with a charter from army commander Maj. Gen. George B. McClellan to enact necessary improvements. By the time of the Battle of Antietam in September, Letterman had established a system of forward first aid stations at the regimental level, introducing principles of triage. He implemented standing operating procedures for the intake and treatment of war casualties and was the first to apply management principles to battlefield medicine.

Letterman also introduced mobile field hospitals at division and corps headquarters, along with an efficient ambulance corps that operated under the control of medical staff rather than the Quartermaster Corps. He streamlined the distribution of medical supplies. Regrettably, at Fredericksburg, Letterman's innovative system was often countermanded by Union officers. Nevertheless, it was adopted by the Army of the Potomac and other Union armies after the Battle of Fredericksburg, eventually becoming the official procedure for the intake and treatment of battlefield casualties.

Amidst the grim aftermath, one story of extraordinary compassion emerged. Richard Rowland Kirkland, known as "The Angel of Marye’s Heights," displayed remarkable humanity. Kirkland, a devout Christian, could not ignore the pleas of the dying Union soldiers. Initially denied permission by his commander, Brigadier General Joseph Kershaw, due to concerns for Kirkland's safety, he eventually received approval to assist the wounded Union soldiers, symbolizing a moment of humanity amidst the brutality of war.

The Battle of Fredericksburg was the single most lopsided victory in the war. The outrageous repetitive attacks on Marye’s Heights had led to an unnecessary attack and thousands of casualties. Although profoundly discouraging for Union soldiers and the Northern populace, did not deliver a decisive impact on the overall course of the war. Despite being the most one-sided Confederate victory in the war, it had minimal strategic significance. Confederate morale surged, despite their numerical disadvantage, while Union morale had already suffered due to the replacement of the popular McClellan with Burnside. Burnside's errors in planning and leadership led to rising insubordination and his infamous ineffective second offensive against Lee in January 1863, mockingly referred to as the “Mud March.”

Understanding the lack of a long-term advantage is essential in comprehending the broader dynamics of the Civil War. Although a resounding tactical victory for the Confederacy, the Battle of Fredericksburg proved to be a hollow triumph. The North's vast resources soon compensated for Burnside's losses in manpower and supplies. Conversely, Lee faced difficulties replenishing both missing soldiers and much-needed supplies.

Strength:

- Union: 122,009 (114,000 engaged)

- Confederate: 78,513 (72,500 engaged)

Casualties and losses:

- Union: 12,653 total (1,284 killed, 9,600 wounded, 1,769 captured/missing)

- Confederate: 5,377 total (608 killed, 4,116 wounded, 653 captured/missing)

The casualty ratio was about 2:1, which, when expressed as percentages, equates to approximately 11.1% for the Union and 7.4% for the Confederacy. While it was a clear Confederate victory, the casualties were not as catastrophic as some accounts suggest. Lee's forces suffered 5,300 casualties but inflicted over twice that number of losses on their Union counterparts. Notably, of the 12,600 Federal soldiers killed, wounded, or missing, almost two-thirds fell in front of the formidable stone wall at Marye's Heights.

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The Worst Union General? Major General Ambrose Burnside

Delving into the character of General Ambrose Burnside, the man whose facial hair lives on as “sideburns” in the vernacular, threatens to lose many readers from the start. Most Civil War enthusiasts would consider him a prime candidate to be named the worst Union general in the war and with some merit. And, no question, he made a series of wild miscalculations and poor judgments.

Lloyd Klein explains.

Ambrose Burnside, 1862 (on the left).

“All the world is a stage, but the play is badly cast.”

― Oscar Wilde

Burnside was actually a very talented man who was grossly miscast in the war. Baseball fans recognize that a pitcher who loses 20 games in a season must be thought of highly because a bad pitcher would never get the opportunity to keep losing; that may be a good analogy to keep in mind when reading about him. The commonly held view that he was always on hand to lose a battle will absolutely be demolished by this in-depth study, although some will not willingly part with that cherished myth.

His father had been a slave owner in South Carolina who freed his slaves and moved to Indiana. Ambrose graduated from West Point, served in garrison duty at the end of the Mexican War, served under Braxton Bragg in Nevada and California, and was the recipient of an Apache arrow through his neck in Las Vegas. He was promoted to first lieutenant and sent to duty in Rhode Island. There he resigned from the army, became commander of the state militia, got married, and went into business, with no expectation of seeing military service ever again. But you know, life can be funny sometimes; our destiny is often beyond our control.

Burnside relinquished his U.S. Army commission to fully dedicate himself to perfecting the Burnside carbine, a groundbreaking breech-loading firearm (as seen in the patent drawing). He ingeniously crafted a unique brass cartridge for this carbine, designed to hold both bullet and powder, with a notable absence of a primer. To load the weapon, users would open the breech block by manipulating the twin trigger guards, inserting the cartridge. Upon pulling the trigger, the hammer struck a separate percussion cap, creating a spark. A hole in the cartridge base ignited the black powder, with the conical cartridge expertly sealing the barrel-breech junction. Unlike many contemporary breech-loaders prone to gas leaks upon firing, Burnside's design triumphantly eliminated this issue.

President Buchanan's Secretary of War, John B. Floyd, entered into a substantial contract with the Burnside Arms Company to outfit a substantial portion of the Army, mainly cavalry, prompting Burnside to establish extensive manufacturing facilities. However, these plans were marred when allegations arose that Floyd accepted bribes to terminate the $100,000 contract with Burnside. This revolutionary concept took time for the military to grasp, and by the time its value was recognized, Burnside had already sold the patent. In 1857, the Burnside carbine triumphed in a competition at West Point, outclassing 17 other carbine designs. Nevertheless, government orders for these carbines were initially sparse. This changed with the outbreak of the Civil War, resulting in over 55,000 carbines being requisitioned for Union cavalrymen. It became the third most widely used carbine during the Civil War, surpassed only by the Sharps carbine and the Spencer carbine.

In 1858 he ran for Congress as a Democrat in Rhode Island and lost. Newly married and out of a job, he needed to find a way to support his young family. So, Burnside went west looking for a job, any job. And he was hired as the Treasurer of the Illinois Central Railroad. Anyone who doubts that the Goddess of History doesn’t have a mordant sense of humor will find this coincidence a bit much. So, consequently, his new boss became George B. McClellan, and in his position, he began working directly with its corporate attorney, one Abraham Lincoln.

The Start of the Civil War

At the outbreak of the Civil War, Burnside was a colonel in the Rhode Island Militia. He raised the 1st Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry Regiment and was appointed its colonel on May 2, 1861. Notably, two companies of this regiment were armed with Burnside carbines. In less than a month, he advanced to brigade leadership within the Department of Northeast Virginia. His performance during the First Battle of Bull Run in July was unremarkable, but he temporarily assumed division command in lieu of the wounded Brig. Gen. David Hunter.

And so suddenly, Ambrose Burnside, inventor, failed politician and businessman, Indian fighter, and fledgling railroad executive, found himself a brigadier general in the Army of the Potomac. Initially tasked with training troops in the nation's capital, his destiny took a sharp turn that autumn. Burnside was entrusted with leading three brigades within the North Carolina Expeditionary Force. Their mission: to seal the North Carolina coast to shipping as part of the naval blockade. Collaborating closely with maritime experts, Burnside orchestrated an impressive amphibious operation that indeed achieved an 80% closure of the coastline. His significant promotion to Major General on March 18, 1862, played a pivotal role in later events during the war. His brigades were officially amalgamated to form the IX Corps, and he earned recognition as one of the Union generals who contributed to Union victories.

1862

In a context where career professional soldiers ruthlessly vied for advancement, an extraordinary occurrence transpired after McClellan's Peninsula Campaign failure: Burnside was offered command of the Army of the Potomac.  He declined, citing his lack of experience in leading an army of that magnitude, resulting in John Pope assuming command. Still, the other generals looked up to him.  In the lead-up to the Second Battle of Manassas, a fellow Major General, Fitz-John Porter, repeatedly conveyed messages to Burnside, questioning Pope's competence. Burnside, concurring with Porter's assessments, forwarded them to higher-ranking authorities, a crucial factor in Porter's later court-martial, during which Burnside testified in his defense.

And after the debacle of Second Manassas, once again he was offered command, and once again, Burnside declined, citing his inexperience as the reason. He acknowledged his shortcomings as a military officer. President Lincoln pressured him on several occasions, but Burnside stood firm in his belief that he wasn't capable of leading such a sizable army, a belief ultimately vindicated by history. He repeatedly declined, saying, "I was not competent to command such a large army as this."

During the Battle of Antietam, Burnside assumed command of the Right Wing of the Army of the Potomac, overseeing the I Corps and his own IX Corps at the outset of the Maryland Campaign. However, McClellan separated these two corps during the battle, stationing them at opposite ends of the Union battle line and restoring Burnside's authority solely over the IX Corps. Burnside, implicitly refusing to relinquish his control, operated as if the corps commanders were first Maj. Gen. Jesse L. Reno (who was killed at South Mountain) and subsequently Brig. Gen. Jacob D. Cox, directing orders through them to the corps.

At Antietam, the fact that Burnside delayed his attack on the Union left flank until the afternoon, particularly in the context of the stone bridge over Antietam Creek, the Rohrback Bridge now known as Burnside Bridge, likely influenced the battle's outcome. A cumbersome command arrangement contributed to Burnside's sluggishness in launching his attack and crossing the Rohrback, later Burnside's Bridge, positioned on the southern flank of the Union line. This delay allowed Confederate forces to reinforce and ultimately repulse the Union breakthrough. Sears suggested in Landscape Turned Red that the problem was that Burnside felt he was demoted and was piqued.  But its hard to imagine Burnside allowing a Union loss for that reason, and even harder to imagine that Lincoln would choose him to be the next Commander in Chief a month later if it were true.

The real story is far more complicated. McClellan sent his engineer to position Burnside but did so incorrectly. Rodman’s small force has to move on its own to Snavely’s Ford, which was the best downstream ford; this was too far away at this point for an alternative route. The idea that the Union forces could have waded across the Antietam Creek was based on a post war remark by out old friend, Henry Kyd Douglas. It was picked up by historians over the 20th Century, including Catton, who used it to make Burnside appear incompetent. The best guess is that it was not true, that there was just one ford, and it was far from ideal for a cross-river crossing under fire. This very complicated story is told in these two links: https://www.historynet.com/sculpting-a-scapegoat-ambrose-burnside-at-antietam/ and https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/assault-on-burnsides-bridge-at-the-battle-of-antietam/In the afternoon, Burnside's corps advanced against the Confederate right. At this critical moment, Jackson's subordinate, Maj. Gen. A. P. Hill, arrived at the last minute from Harpers Ferry McClellan might have secured victory if Burnside had acted differently. The cumbersome command arrangement contributed to Burnside's sluggishness in launching his attack and crossing Burnside's Bridge, positioned on the southern flank of the Union line. This delay allowed Confederate forces to reinforce and ultimately repulse the Union breakthrough.

Burnside failed to conduct a thorough reconnaissance of the area and failed to exploit numerous easily accessible fording sites beyond the reach of Confederate forces. Instead, his troops were repeatedly forced into assaulting the narrow bridge, under the threat of Confederate sharpshooters on elevated terrain. McClellan, growing impatient, sent couriers to urge Burnside forward, even ordering, "Tell him if it costs 10,000 men he must go now." Despite this, Burnside didn't receive reinforcements, and the battle ended with missed opportunities. He further increased the pressure by sending his inspector general to confront Burnside, who reacted indignantly: "McClellan appears to think I am not trying my best to carry this bridge; you are the third or fourth one who has been to me this morning with similar orders.” The IX Corps eventually broke through, but the delay allowed Maj. Gen. A.P. Hill's Confederate division to come up from Harpers Ferry and repulse the Union breakthrough. McClellan refused Burnside's requests for reinforcements, and the battle ended. 

Astonishingly, Burnside was offered command once more, despite his poor performance at Antietam.

Fredericksburg

Lincoln issued the order to remove McClellan on November 5, 1862, and on November 7, 1862, he selected Burnside to take his place. Burnside reluctantly complied with this directive, the third such instance in 1862, partly due to the courier's message that if he declined, command would instead be given to Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker, whom Burnside had an aversion to. It is instructive that he was offered this position and compelled to accept the third time given his own reluctance and, as history shows, his lack of preparation for the position.  The fact is, no one in the Union Army had ever been prepared for such a role, and he was as accomplished as anyone in senior leadership.

Burnside on taking command moved his army from near Culpepper to Falmouth within a few days, a pretty monumental achievement. His plan was to then make a direct attack on the Confederate capitol of Richmond, Virginia, avoiding Lee’s forces who were then in Culpepper. Burnside arrived in Falmouth by November 19, but the pontoons that he planned to use to cross the Rappahannock were delayed. He had ordered pontoon bridges from DC, but they were not delivered for weeks by the Quartermaster Department.  General Halleck acknowledged afterward that he had opposed the movement and had not hurried their supply. The loss of time allowed Lee to position Longstreet on Marye’s Heights.

The Assault on Marye's Heights resulted in a casualty rate estimated at 15-20% for Union troops, contributing to a total Union casualty count of 8,000. By comparison, Pickett’s charge had 6000 Confederate casualties of 12,500 engaged, or close to 50%. Malvern Hill had 8000-9000 casualties on both sides combined, or about 16-18%. Numbers aside, these figures tell us that attacks of entrenched or prepared positions in the Civil War were challenging, and the technology didn’t exist to overcome those odds.

It is so obvious to us, 160 years later, that this was a disastrous move. It wasn’t obvious to Burnside. Burnside’s decision to escalate the initial diversionary attack into a full-scale frontal assault on Marye's Heights at Fredericksburg was a costly and unsuccessful move. Why smart people make decisions that don’t work out can be perplexing, and General Burnside at Fredericksburg gives us a chance to see how external pressure and internal self-delusion impact our choices.

Several factors influenced Burnside's decision-making. There was a breakdown in communication and coordination among Union commanders. Burnside received reports of limited success in the diversionary attack on the Confederate right flank, leading him to believe that a more aggressive assault on Marye's Heights was needed to divert Confederate attention. Pressure to achieve a decisive victory and optimism may have clouded his judgment.

Burnside believed in his numerical advantage and hoped to dislodge the Confederate defenders through overwhelming force. Given the circumstances, Marye's Heights seemed the most promising target due to its proximity to the shelter of Fredericksburg and the less steep terrain. These factors, combined with the changing dynamics of the battlefield and the desire for a breakthrough, led Burnside to escalate what was originally intended as a diversionary attack into a full-scale frontal assault on Marye's Heights. I think none of the Civil War commanders understood that artillery had changed war a great deal and still believed that brute force attacks could overcome any defense; see Lee at Gettysburg, Grant at Cold Harbor. I also think Burnside was not a strategic genius and had exactly one plan in mind, and when it failed, he panicked.

Several of Burnside's subordinate commanders, including General William B. Franklin, expressed reservations about the frontal assault on Marye's Heights during the Battle of Fredericksburg. Franklin, in particular, was critical of the plan and argued against it. He believed that attacking Marye's Heights directly would result in high casualties and was unlikely to succeed. Hooker, Sumner, and several others told Burnside it was futile, but he continued to order piecemeal attacks.

The Battle of Fredericksburg is not a moment of shining glory for General Burnside. The battle and the subsequent ill-fated offensive led to Burnside's officers voicing vehement complaints to the White House and the War Department, citing his incompetence. Burnside attempted a Spring offensive, only to encounter hindrances stemming from poor planning and organization. The Spring Offensive was known as the Mud March. Although conceptually clever, it was highly impractical for January in Virginia. Burnside's plan was quite similar to Hooker's strategy in the Battle of Chancellorsville, aiming to outmaneuver Lee using the upriver fords on the Rappahannock. Burnside intended to execute this with his cavalry, which had thus far delivered lackluster performances in the war. However, heavy rains in January transformed the roads into impassable mud, forcing the plan's abandonment

After Fredericksburg

Burnside offered his resignation, but Lincoln declined, proposing that there might still be a role for him within the army. Consequently, Burnside was reinstated as the head of the IX Corps and dispatched to command a relatively inactive department, a quiet region with limited activity. Lincoln's rationale was that Burnside couldn't get into significant trouble there. However, he swiftly found himself embroiled in a major political controversy.

Burnside was assigned to the Department of the Ohio, which encompassed the states of Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, and Illinois. Burnside issued a series of orders in a region with divided loyalties and sentiments, seeking to suppress "the expression of public sentiments against the war or the Administration." General Order No. 38, in particular, declared that "any person found guilty of treason will be tried by a military tribunal and either imprisoned or banished to enemy lines." On May 1, 1863, Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham, a prominent opponent of the war, held a large public rally in Mount Vernon, Ohio in which he denounced President Lincoln as a "tyrant" who sought to abolish the Constitution and set up a dictatorship. Burnside had dispatched several agents to the rally who took down notes and brought back their "evidence" to the general, who then declared that it was sufficient grounds to arrest Vallandigham for treason. This led to the arrest and trial of Ohio Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham, a prominent war opponent, further fueling political discord. A military court tried him and found him guilty of violating General Order No. 38, despite his protests that he was simply expressing his opinions in public. Vallandigham was found guilty of violating General Order No. 38, and sentenced to imprisonment for the duration of the war. This turned him into a martyr by antiwar Democrats. Lincoln had to extricate the entire Republican administration from the fallout that Burnside had produced.

Lincoln and Grant faced a dilemma concerning Burnside, pondering whether he posed a greater hindrance as a general in the field or in political administration. Initially, he was dispatched to relieve Knoxville, a relatively manageable task since only 2,300 troops opposed him. However, it still necessitated the return of all three brigades from Knoxville to force the Cumberland Gap's surrender. The strategic intent of the Knoxville campaign was to prevent Burnside's reinforcement of the besieged Federal forces at Chattanooga. Longstreet’s movement forced Burnside back into the defensive works in Knoxville. Burnside effectively outmaneuvered Longstreet at the Battle of Campbell's Station and successfully reached safety in Knoxville, where he endured a brief siege until the Confederate defeat at the Battle of Fort Sanders outside the city. It should be noted that General Burnside, widely seen as incompetent by modern enthusiasts, defeated Longstreet, widely seen as stellar, in this one-against-one campaign. There were extenuating circumstances, such as favorable terrain and supply routes, of course; but that is history. Longstreet then began a siege but it wasn’t very effective. After the first week, Longstreet learned of Bragg’s defeat at Chattanooga. Longstreet realized that time was not on his side, so he ordered an assault a few days later, but it failed miserably. Then, General Longstreet, who had bested him at Marye's Heights, launched an attack, preventing disaster despite being besieged. Grant sent Sherman to assist, but Longstreet had already withdrawn to Virginia. Longstreet's siege ended when Maj. Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman led the Army of the Tennessee to Knoxville, entered the city, and relieved Burnside.  Longstreet withdrew his men and later rejoined Gen. Robert E. Lee’s command in Virginia.

Later, Grant, thinking he could better monitor Burnside in the east, brought him back to Virginia. Unfortunately, Burnside's performance at the Battle of Spotsylvania Court House and later at the Battle of the Crater was subpar.

During the Overland Campaign, Burnside's actions were less than stellar. At the Wilderness, timely attacks over three days could have secured victory, but Burnside failed to launch them. On the second day, had this union general moved rapidly when ordered (or even at all), AP Hill’s corps might have been destroyed. But once again, he was too slow to recognize the potential.

The blame for the Union's failure at the Battle of the Crater initially fell on Burnside, but it was later lifted. Burnside had been ordered to change the attacking troops at the last minute by Meade. General Ambrose Burnside was the corps leader of the Union assault. He was relieved of command for the final time for this failure. Brigadier General Edward Ferrero's division of black soldiers sustained very high casualties, perhaps because the Confederates refused to accept them as prisoners when they tried to surrender. He and  General James H. Ledlie were drinking rum throughout the battle in a bunker behind the lines. A division of United States Colored Troops under Ferrero trained to lead the assault. The plan was for one brigade to go left of the crater and the other to the right. A regiment from both brigades was to rush perpendicular to the crater. Then, the remaining force was to seize the Jerusalem Plank Road just 1,600 feet behind the line.

But the day before, Meade ordered Burnside not to use the black troops in the lead assault. Instead, Ledlie’s division was chosen but no one told them what to do once the explosion occurred. Meade did not let them charge because he thought if it failed then it would receive political backlash in the north and only prove Lincoln's message as false. He was aligning military goals with political ones. The USCT instead charged behind the lead troops. Tactically, Union troops entered the crater instead of going around it.  There, they were trapped in a hole with no support on the flanks. The ANV began shooting surrendering troops, perhaps due to racial animus. Ledlie was forced to resign by Meade and Grant.

Post-war Accomplishments

Burnside exhibited his intelligence and abilities in all of his positions after the war. He was elected Governor and later served as a US Senator from Rhode Island, chairing the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. He even attempted to mediate an end to the Franco-Prussian War.
It is remarkable that as accomplished as he was both before and after the war, his legacy among Civil War enthusiasts is so diminished. Grant remarked that Burnside was "unfitted" for army command, a sentiment shared even by Burnside himself. It should be recognized that Grant fired handfuls of generals during the war who did not live up to his standards, but he always kept Burnside around. Despite his affable personality and diverse talents, Burnside's Civil War decisions showcased his weakest contributions to history. However, astute historians recognize his deeper well of aptitude.

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The Logistical Challenges of the Confederacy in the U.S. Civil War

Much of what happened on Civil War battlefields was determined by the economic and logistical foundations of the societies the armies represented. The military that a country puts on the battlefield is not a generic collection of soldiers but rather a direct reflection of the culture that creates it. War can be compared to an iceberg: the armies and battles are its visible and graphic “tip”, but what actually decides the outcome of the battles are the money and resources available to acquire the weapons and equipment needed to wage war effectively. The procurement and transportation of clothing, food and supplies were the decisive factors, but are typically relegated to footnotes, remaining submerged and invisible.

Here, Lloyd W Klein looks at the logistical challenges in the Confederacy through the Confederate Quartermaster and the Subsistence Corps.

Colonel Abraham Myers.

The Logistics Problems of the Confederacy

The Confederate government faced myriad interconnected problems that hindered its ability to adequately plan for and address the logistical challenges during the American Civil War. The combination of the Union blockade, limited industrial capacity, transportation issues, financial strain, diplomatic challenges, and internal divisions contributed to the Confederate government's difficulties in acquiring and sustaining critical resources during the Civil War. The combination of resource limitations, economic constraints, political factors, and the nature of the conflict itself made it difficult for the Confederate government to plan and address the logistical challenges in a comprehensive manner (see below).

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Origins of the Logistics Issues Faced by the Confederacy

Blockade: The Union Navy imposed a blockade on Southern ports, severely restricting the Confederacy's access to foreign trade and essential supplies. This blockade made it challenging for the Confederacy to import much-needed goods and resources.

Insufficient Industrial Capacity: The Confederate states had a smaller industrial base compared to the more industrialized Northern states. They relied heavily on agriculture, and their limited industrial capacity hindered their ability to produce weapons, ammunition, and other crucial supplies necessary for war.

Poor Rail. Transportation: The war disrupted transportation networks, making it difficult to move resources efficiently within the Confederate states and further complicated efforts to acquire and distribute resources efficiently.

Political Conflict between states and national government: The Confederate states prioritized their individual interests over the collective needs of the Confederacy, leading to internal divisions and challenges in coordinating resource allocation.

The Confederacy had fewer resources and a smaller industrial base compared to the Union. They struggled to match the Union's manufacturing capabilities and lacked the infrastructure to support large-scale production and transportation of weapons and supplies. Moreover, the Confederate government faced economic difficulties throughout the war, including inflation and a strained financial system. These constraints made it challenging to allocate sufficient funds for logistics, transportation infrastructure, and the procurement of necessary resources. The Union blockade severely restricted the Confederacy's ability to import weapons, ammunition, and other supplies from foreign sources. This created a significant reliance on domestic production, which was insufficient to meet the demands of the war.

The Confederate government was structured in its Constitution to be a federation of states without a strong national government, consistent with its founding philosophy based on states’ rights. It was comprised of individual states with varying priorities and interests. Coordination and cooperation among these states in terms of logistics and supply chain management were challenging. Additionally, disagreements and competing interests among political leaders impacted efficient planning and execution of logistics.

Impact of military strategy. The Confederate military leadership, including General Robert E. Lee, opted for offensive strategies and focused on battlefield victories. This emphasis on aggressive tactics sometimes overshadowed the need for comprehensive logistical planning, leading to inadequate preparations for sustaining operations. As an insurgency, a better strategy might have been to defend critical territories and cities, hoping to withstand a Union invasion. But a short war was envisioned and this was not politically a choice Jefferson Davis thought was feasible at the time.

Limited industrial and manufacturing sector. The new Confederate nation possessed insufficient production capacity for the trial ahead. The Confederacy had fewer factories, foundries, and manufacturing facilities compared to the industrialized North. Consequently, the Confederacy struggled to meet the demands for weapons, ammunition, uniforms, and other essential supplies. This scarcity hindered their ability to adequately equip and sustain their troops in the field.

The Confederacy relied heavily on imports to compensate for their domestic manufacturing limitations. However, the Union blockade disrupted their ability to import goods and materials, including weapons and vital supplies. The inability to access foreign sources of production and technology exacerbated the supply shortages faced by the Confederacy.

The limited industrial sector also affected the development of transportation infrastructure. The Confederacy had fewer railways, fewer navigable waterways, and fewer well-maintained roads compared to the Union. The lack of robust transportation systems made it challenging to move goods, weapons, and supplies efficiently to the front lines, resulting in delays and logistical difficulties.

The limited industrial and manufacturing sectors of the Confederacy meant there was a scarcity of raw materials, such as iron, coal, and other critical resources needed for production. This scarcity affected the ability to produce and maintain weapons, ammunition, and other necessary supplies, further straining logistical operations.

The Confederacy's industrial base was heavily agricultural, with limited diversification into other industries. This lack of diversification made it difficult to develop a robust manufacturing sector capable of meeting the varied demands of the war effort. The limited range of industrial capabilities constrained their ability to produce a wide array of equipment and supplies needed for the military.

Overall, the limited industrial and manufacturing sectors of the Confederacy had a profound impact on logistical operations. Supplying and equipping Confederate forces during the war was a serious problem for the entire 4 years but became worse as time wore on and critical ports and geographic areas came under Union control.

Scarcities of various essential war resources. The Confederacy struggled to produce enough firearms and ammunition to adequately equip its troops. Rifles, muskets, and other weapons were in high demand, but the limited manufacturing capabilities meant that many soldiers had to rely on outdated or inferior weapons. Ammunition shortages also occurred, limiting the firepower of Confederate forces.

The production of uniforms and clothing was insufficient to meet the needs of the Confederate Army. Soldiers often faced shortages of proper uniforms, resulting in a mix of civilian clothing, captured Union uniforms, and makeshift garments. This not only affected morale but also impacted the identification of friendly troops on the battlefield.

Adequate footwear was scarce among Confederate soldiers. Leather shortages and limited production capabilities led to soldiers marching and fighting with inadequate or worn-out shoes. This created significant discomfort, increased the risk of foot-related health issues, and impacted mobility on the battlefield.

The production of blankets and tents fell short of demand. Confederate soldiers often lacked sufficient protection from the elements, especially during harsh winter conditions. This further contributed to the hardships endured by troops in the field.

The Confederacy faced difficulties in procuring and producing medical supplies needed to treat wounded soldiers and to treat communicable diseases. Scarcities included items such as bandages, medicines, surgical instruments, and anesthetics. Medical personnel often had to improvise and rely on limited resources, resulting in compromised healthcare for the wounded.

The limited industrial capacity of the Confederacy affected the production of essential machinery and equipment needed for various sectors, such as manufacturing, mining, and transportation. This hindered the development and expansion of critical industries and further impacted the overall war effort.

The Sustainment Bureaucracy

Expecting only a brief war and anticipating merely a perfunctory Northern response, secessionist leaders had quietly planned to construct a sufficient military force for that limited mission. After preparing a political ideology that succeeded in establish secession, they planned for a single battle that would decide the question. They had amassed abundant weapons through subterfuge and capturing supplies at federal forts to last them for a year or two. In retrospect, it is apparent that the Confederate leaders had not expected to fight a long war and had not made contingency plans until secession actually forced a serious consideration.  The creation of military sustainment departments began on February 26, 1861, even before the authorization of an army on March 6 (1,2). A Bureau of Ordnance was created on April.27. The leaders of the Quartermaster, Subsistence and Ordinance Departments, Colonel Abraham Myers, Lieutenant-Colonel Lucius Northrop, and Major Josiah Gorgas had considerable influence on logistics organizations and operations for the Confederate armies. These three men were charged with the responsibility of harnessing the Southern economy to support the armies.

The Confederacy was a newly formed nation with a limited institutional framework and experience in managing large-scale logistics and warfare. The absence of a well-established bureaucracy and logistics system further hampered their ability to plan and execute effective supply chains. After Manassas, it became clear that food, additional armaments and clothes would be needed to carry on the war effort.  Financial means and mechanisms for their procurement became critical facets of war planning. As the duration of the war lengthened, inherent weaknesses in the Confederate economy began to show. The political and military leaders expected their land mass to be their defense, never thinking that the Union could build bridges and roads and repair railroads as fast as its cavalry could burn them. They expected cotton to be their financial strength, but never considered where armaments and supplies would come from or paid for, and never planned on the expense of a naval presence to counter a blockade of its ports.

The Quartermaster Department

The Confederate Congress created the position of Quartermaster-General on February 26, 1861. The Secretary of War was allowed to appoint one colonel and six majors to serve as Quartermasters (3, 4).  Abraham Myers served as the first Quartermaster General for the Confederate States of America during the Civil War. Myers was responsible for managing and supplying the Confederate Army with various provisions, including food, clothing, and equipment. The role of the Quartermaster General was crucial in maintaining the logistics and efficiency of the Confederate military operations. Myers played a significant part in ensuring that the Confederate forces were adequately equipped and provisioned throughout the war.

The Confederate Quartermaster Department was responsible for procuring, transporting, and distributing essential supplies to the troops, including food, clothing, equipment, and ammunition.

Overseeing the supply of an army is a complicated job: besides weapons and armaments procurement, the responsibilities also included uniforms, horses, wagons, and railroad cars; and finding the money and resources to acquire these supplies.  It also entails transportation of the materials to the location of the army, constructing supply depots near enough the front to be effective but not where it could be captured, and coordinating production with need. The quartermaster department is responsible for creating a supply network for the army; in particular, the procurement, maintenance, and transportation of military materiel, facilities, and personnel. It is the functional bridge between economics and tactical operations. To operate optimally, the logistical network must connect the combat forces with the strengths and capabilities of the society it defends. It does not simply create itself and it is not merely an administrative task; it is an enterprise in itself that requires using technological and economic resources to overcome an enemy and sustains the military forces by supporting its warfighting readiness (5).

Myers had a very difficult if not impossible situation to accomplish these goals. The Confederacy faced severe resource limitations, including shortages of essential supplies such as food, clothing, and equipment. Additionally, the Union blockade hindered the Confederacy's ability to import necessary goods from overseas.

His pre-war experience in southern forts and his contacts in those positions were especially valuable in getting started. Myers sent agents into the domestic market, contracting with local manufacturers and paying competitive rates. The department bought cotton, woolen cloth, and leather goods.  He also established shops for making clothing, shoes, tents, wagons, and other equipment, and purchased livestock at market prices for as long as possible.  During the first few months the South had sufficient supplies to cobble together a supply chain (6,7).

But the South lacked the manufacturing infrastructure required to produce and build the required huge quantities of food, equipment, shoes, and clothing.  Settling in for what would be a long war they had not planned for, the supply deficits developed into a crisis as the financial weakness of the country led to runaway inflation. The CSA government had to create a supply chain that would bring its armies the supplies needed to allow it to continue the war. Creating a new country with a new financial system, revamping its rail system, and developing its industrial capacity would have posed inconceivable and perhaps impossible problems for a state government dominated system in peacetime. Trying to accomplish these tasks while being invaded by a much larger, more resource rich country bordering its most critical strategic areas was likely beyond anyone’s capacity.

Myers was a highly experienced quartermaster officer who was widely admired for competence, integrity and efficiency (8). Myers' efforts to fulfill the needs of the armies brought praise from some and condemnation from others. He immediately began advertising for tents and other camp equipment from southern vendors (9).  As president of the military board, Myers helped design the first Confederate Army uniform. (10) Blankets, shoes and wool remained scarce. Quartermaster depots were created around the South in large cities (11). Supplying uniforms in bulk in 1861 was a huge problem (12). He estimated in 1861 that he needed 1,600,000 pairs of shoes for the first year, but he could only locate 300,000 (13). He also estimated that he would need hundreds of thousands of blankets, socks, and shirts, and almost no industry was present in the South to procure them. They would have to be imported from Europe and brought through the blockade.

It was not enough to purchase these items; they had to be transported to the armies. He devised a system of supply depots; Richmond and Nashville would be the main depots for the two armies, with multiple satellite storage areas closer to the front (14). The railroads were the primary means of transporting these items, as there was minimal merchant marine activity with the blockade and overland wagon routes were slow and subject to military attack.

Despite a very large service, he was restricted by a lack of funds, inflation, and poor railroads, over which he had no control. His department was criticized among its generals because the South could not obtain supplies to outfit the Army. His inability to provide shoes and uniforms was an especially serious problem.  He set goals and controls on southern manufacturing throughout the war. By commandeering more than half the South's produced goods for the military, the quartermaster general, in a counterintuitive drift toward socialism, appropriated hundreds of mills and controlled the flow of southern factory commodities, especially salt (15).

Some criticisms of Myers and the Confederate quartermaster department include inefficiency, inadequate coordination, and difficulties in providing timely and sufficient supplies to the army. These issues were partially attributed to the limited resources and the overall logistical challenges faced by the Confederacy. The CSA lacked nearly all manufactured products and had little capacity to make them. The Quartermaster Department proved to be unable to properly equip and clothe the Confederate soldiers. Myers consistently failed to anticipate the operational requirements of the army (16). As a result, Lee was often at a logistical disadvantage. The significant constraints and limitations that Myers and the Confederate quartermaster department operated under made the task of supplying the Confederate army extremely challenging. Despite these challenges, Myers and his department managed to provide some level of support to the Confederate forces throughout the conflict. Overall, assessing Myers' performance as a quartermaster general requires considering the extraordinary circumstances of the Confederacy during the war.

Subsistence Department

Lt Col Isaac M. St. John Northrop served as the Commissary General and Subsistence Director of the Confederate States Army. He was responsible for procurement and transportation of food to soldiers in the field. Northrop's tenure as Subsistence Director was marked by significant challenges due to resource shortages, logistical difficulties, and the impact of the Union blockade on the Confederate food supply. These challenges resulted in widespread food shortages and inadequate rations for Confederate soldiers throughout the war.

Critics of Northrop argue that he was inefficient, lacked effective management skills, and failed to adequately address the logistical and supply issues facing the Confederate army. There were allegations of corruption, favoritism, and mismanagement within the commissary department, which contributed to the inadequate provisioning of soldiers. Moreover, Northrop had a frustrating tendency to deny support by creating unnecessary administrative hurdles and red tape (17).

His performance in a capacity for which he was completely unprepared was abysmal.  The supply of food, shoes, clothing, and other materials has been termed inexcusably inadequate (18) Confederate soldiers were frequently obliged to make do inadequate rations, and to forage amongst their own countrymen. While the stuff of legend and a sign of intrepidness, it’s no way to fight a war – on one’s own territory. It is incomprehensible that commissaries in Vicksburg and Virginia were unable to stockpile provisions in military zones located in friendly territory (19).

Ordinance

In contrast, Josiah Gorgas served with distinction as the Chief of Ordnance for the Confederate States Army. He was responsible for overseeing the procurement, production, and distribution of weapons, ammunition, and other military supplies for the Confederate forces. Gorgas is generally regarded as a highly competent and effective ordnance officer. Under his leadership, the Confederate Ordnance Department faced numerous challenges, including limited resources, inadequate industrial infrastructure, and the Union blockade. Despite these challenges, Gorgas worked to establish and expand Confederate arms factories, streamline production processes, and improve the efficiency of supply chains.

His primary function was to create an armaments supply system: the acquisition and distribution of armaments and ammunition in the Confederate army. The new country possessed almost no industry capable of providing arms and ammunition: ante bellum ordnance-making factories were mostly located in the North. Furthermore, existing supplies of weapons had been seized by Confederate state militias, and their state governments resisted sharing them. Gorgas recognized that only a limited amount of money was available to spend on arms and ammunition.

The limited production capacity due to the absence of manufacturing industries constrained the ability to mass-produce firearms. The scarcity of raw materials, particularly iron and steel, also posed a significant challenge for firearm production. The Confederacy lacked the technological expertise and infrastructure necessary for the efficient production of advanced firearms. They lagged behind the North in terms of machinery, precision manufacturing techniques, and skilled labor. This limited their ability to produce modern and sophisticated firearms.

Consequently, the Confederacy relied on imports to supplement their domestic firearm production. The Confederacy faced difficulties in accessing these resources from abroad due to the Union blockade. As the war progressed, the Union blockade efficacy increased, disrupting the ability to import finished firearms or components from abroad.

To compensate for these limitations, the Confederacy resorted to various measures. They converted existing weapons, such as hunting rifles or smoothbore muskets, into serviceable firearms. They also sought to repair and reuse captured Union weapons. Additionally, they established government-owned and private armories to manufacture firearms, although these facilities were often limited in output and faced resource shortages.

Gorgas implemented measures to increase domestic production of firearms, ammunition, and artillery, making the Confederacy less reliant on imported arms. He also made efforts to repair and refurbish captured Union weapons to supplement Confederate armament. Gorgas emphasized the importance of quality control and strived to ensure that Confederate forces were supplied with functional and reliable weapons.

Gorgas constructed systems to scavenge arms from battlefields, import arms and essential manufacturing supplies from Europe, and build an industrial complex to manufacture what the army required. He was responsible for ensuring that artillery tubes and rifles were delivered through the blockade. He established armories to store the materials so when needed, they could be transported easily to the front lines (20,21). Gorgas created a system that supplied all the powder and artillery for the Confederacy, despite labor shortages. (22) Although the Confederate armies often lacked basic food and clothing, they were rarely without necessary ammunition.

Faced with the problem that the Confederacy had few facilities for weapons manufacture and no plants to produce gunpowder, Gorgas demonstrated brilliant administrative skill in building these capabilities. Gorgas, as Chief of Ordnance for the Confederate States Army, implemented several measures regarding weapon procurement during the American Civil War. Gorgas recognized the need to increase weapon production to meet the demands of the war. He established new armories and expanded existing ones to boost manufacturing capacity. He sought assistance from private companies to fulfill the Confederacy's weapon needs. He entered into contracts with private arms manufacturers to produce firearms, artillery, and other military equipment. He recognized the necessity of captured Union weapons and directed efforts to refurbish and reuse them. This practice helped supplement the Confederate Army's weapon inventory. Since the Confederacy had limited domestic manufacturing capabilities, Gorgas focused on importing weapons from abroad. He coordinated efforts to procure arms from Europe, primarily from countries such as Britain and France.

Gorgas and his team faced immense logistical challenges in transporting weapons.
Gorgas prioritized the allocation of available resources to meet the most pressing weapon needs. He assessed the demands of various theaters of war and distributed weapons accordingly, based on strategic requirements. He relied heavily on the existing railway networks to transport weapons and ammunition. Railways were crucial in moving large quantities of arms from manufacturing centers to distribution points closer to the front lines.

Other methods of transporting arms were necessary given the state of the railroads in the South. When feasible, Gorgas utilized rivers for transportation. Riverboats and steamers were employed to move weapons and supplies along navigable waterways, providing an alternative to overland transportation. Overland transportation via wagon trains played a significant role in moving weapons and supplies to the front lines. Wagons, pulled by horses or mules, were used to transport arms overland from distribution depots to the troops in the field.

By 1863, the South had several factories producing modern weapons. Despite the inferior southern rail system and southern governors who hoarded supplies in their own states, Gorgas almost single-handedly assured that the troops on the front line had sufficient weapons and ammunition to carry on. Gorgas performed an outstanding service in developing businesses to produce weaponry and transporting it to the front. Rifles and ammunition continued to be in abundance even when supplies of food and other materials had vanished (23,24).

Logistics Network

The procurement and transport of military materiel into the Confederacy was a dismal logistical failure. At first, it was borderline in its efficacy; but as ports were closed, key mining and farming territories lost, and supply depots captured, the network became increasingly unable to supply the needs of its armies in the field.

Cost of Supply

The Confederate government faced severe financial constraints throughout the war. The limited funds available hindered the procurement and distribution of supplies, and often resulted in inadequate provisioning for the troops.

Inefficiencies and corruption. The Confederate quartermaster department encountered issues with inefficiencies, mismanagement, and corruption. Supply routes were not always optimized, and there were instances of fraud and misappropriation of resources, leading to further logistical challenges. Perhaps even more problematic than limited resources was the “pervasive ineffectiveness that characterized every aspect of Confederate administrative life, especially its logistical and supply arrangements” (25).

Inflationary spiral. Understanding the problems that confronted these officers requires a comprehension of the costs of Confederate supply and how the Confederate inflationary spiral altered the war. As a comparison, the US dollar has experienced on average a 2.18% inflation rate per year since 1860. Hence, $1 in 1860 is roughly equivalent to $32.43 in 2023 dollars. (26). The inflationary spiral of the Confederate dollar during the four years of the war increased its costs exponentially: every 6 months, the value of the Confederate dollar decreased in value so much that costs were almost incomparable to the previous time frame. The total expenditures of the CSA government, nearly all of which were for the War Department, increased from $70 million in November 1861 to $329 million in August 1862. That is a dizzying figure to contemplate in retrospect, and impossible to imagine what it was like for Myers, whose job it was to administrate and develop budgets for his department a year in advance.  One example is that the $199 million allocated for the war budget for 1862 had run out by September (27). It’s impossible to operate a functional war machine with inflation at that unsustainable rate. 

A significant escalation of the problem can be ascribed to a single event of marked importance. On April 29, 1862, Commander David Farragut captured the South’s largest port city, New Orleans. (28)  The fall of New Orleans was a powerful financial disadvantage. For a nation composed of rebellious states to wage war, it must have capital with which to pay for war supplies: weapons, armaments, horses, food, clothing, soldiers’ salaries, etc.

Impact on Subsistence Administration. The resulting budgetary pressure had consequences all along the administrative path. In 1862, Myers saw his estimated budget cut from roughly $27 million/month to $19 million.  He informed the cabinet that at that time, the current actual expenditure was $24.5 million/month, and with inflation would clearly become much higher. Myers lobbied the Congress for more appropriations to keep the war effort on track. The CSA Congress then passed a supplementary expenditure of $127 million to pay for just the 3 months of December 1862 to February 1863 (29).

In response to these absurd cost rises, even more Treasury notes were issued on March 3,1863. In total over $517 million in notes were issued that year alone, reflecting the tripling of costs in just one year.  These would further worsen the inflationary spiral.

Centralization of Manufacturing

With the onset of the war, the Confederate War Department centralized control over the nation’s industries. This was surprising given that the CSA was designed as a state-controlled government with limited federal powers. The Quartermaster and Ordnance Bureaus organized the production and distribution of war materiel.  In time, many of the Confederacy’s large-scale manufacturers – textile mills, foundries, and machine shops – worked under contract with the Ordnance and Quartermaster Bureaus. The salt industry was entirely operated by the CSA government in what has been termed “salt socialism” (30). A government formed on the principles of state primacy and not a central government was finding it necessary to institute federal control of industry.

Moreover, by 1862 shortages of supplies and equipment, in addition to inflated prices in the domestic markets, led to the conferring of impressment powers on Myers in addition to the Commissary Department (31). While this somewhat alleviated the supply issues, it became demoralizing for the public.  The central government was now empowered to seize the products of its citizens and pay them what it could, not what it was worth.

Cost of Transportation. The transportation of supplies at a cost-efficient price was one of the Confederacies biggest difficulties. The southern railroad system failed to transmit sufficient supplies to the armies, and many supplies were kept in storage because they couldn’t get to the soldiers. By February 1862, horses and men were not receiving sufficient rations. The Richmond, Fredericksburg & Potomac RR was not carrying food and forage because the prices able to be charged for these items were small and there was no centralized control. Eastern North Carolina had abundant stores of corn, bacon and grain but the route necessary to carry these items to the front was byzantine: The Wilmington and Weldon RR was a single-track road, connecting with the Richmond line, but this connection was in terrible condition and there was no cooperation between the lines. In a confederation system without centralized government authority, private ownership of railroads continued to run on profit not patriotism. Despite these inefficiencies, Myers opposed central government control or the building of its own trains, believing that would only increase the inefficiencies. Later in 1863, he worked with Secretary of War Seddon and President Davis to put pressure on the rail owners to expedite shipments despite lower profit margins (32).

And in 1862, the level of rail efficiency was at its peak: it declined from there. As the war continued, the rail system became even less adequate. The tracks began to deteriorate. The metal composition of the Southern rails was of relatively soft iron, frequently fractured or wear after continued use, requiring high maintenance. In the mid- 19thcentury, Northern foundries began to produce more durable iron products such as steel but the southern foundries did not switch to the more difficult to manufacture material. Steel must be smelted from iron ore, in which impurities (e.g., carbon, nitrogen silicon) are removed and alloying elements (e.g., manganese, nickel, chromium) are added. Consequently, the infrastructure of southern track crumbled throughout the war, with limited resources for their repair. Myers complained that the locomotives were breaking down and had no replacement parts. (33)

Conclusion

The skills of a society to identify, purchase and convey the goods and supplies necessary to maintain an army in working order is a window into the health of that society and transcends mere administrative planning.  How the needs of the Confederate armies in the field were determined, acquired, transported and distributed is a central but often overlooked piece of the Civil War narrative. How they fared is a vital part of the story of the Confederacy.

What do you think of the Confederacy’s logistical challenges during the U.S. Civil War? Let us know below.

Now, read Lloyd’s article on the Battle of Fort Sumter and the beginning of the U.S. Civil War here.

References

1.     Woodruff JD. The Impact of Logistics on General Robert E. Lee at Gettysburg. Accessed at https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/AD1083715.pdf 6/23/23.

2.     Goff, Richard D. Confederate Supply. Pranava Books.1969, pages 6-7.

3.     Wilson HS. Confederate Industry: Manufacturers and Quartermasters in the Civil War. University Press of Mississippi, 2002, pages 15-25. https://epdf.pub/confederate-industry-manufacturers-and-quartermasters-in-the-civil-war.html  

4.     The War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies, Series I, Vol. I, 495. (Hereafter: OR). https://ehistory.osu.edu/books/official-records/001/0495

5.     Wissler, John E. Logistics: The Lifeblood of Military Power. Heritage.org. https://www.heritage.org/military-strength-topical-essays/2019-essays/logistics-the-lifeblood-military-power

6.     Goff op cit pages 15-

7.     The Twiggs-Myers Family. Fix Bayonets Blog. (hereafter: Fix) https://fixbayonetsusmc.blog/2019/03/29/the-twiggs-myers-family-part-iii/

8.     Goff op cit pages 33-35.

9.     Goff op cit pages 15-16.

10.  Goff op cit page 16

11.  Goff op cit page 16

12.  Goff op cit page 33

13.  Goff op cit page 34

14.  Goff op cit page 35

15.  Lonn, Ella. Salt as a Factor in the Confederacy. New York, W. Neale, 1933 and

Davis, William C. Look Away: A History of Confederate States of America. The Free Press, New York, 2002, Chapter 10.

16.  Wilson op cit page 4

17.  Vandiver F. Ploughshares into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance. Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 1952, 165.

18.  Wiley, Bell I. (1968). The Road to Appomattox. New York City: Atheneum Books. 31.

19.  Hess, Earl J. Civil War Supply and Strategy. Louisiana State University Press, 2020. Page 84

20.  McPherson, James M. Battle Cry of Freedom.  Oxford University Press, 2003. page 318.

21.  Klein LW. How the Confederacy got their Weapons – Fueling the Confederate War Machine. The Civil War Center. Accessed 6/23/23. https://thecivilwarcenter.wpcomstaging.com/2022/06/06/how-the-confederacy-got-their-weapons-fueling-the-confederate-war-machine/

22.  Goff op cit 246

23.  Klein LW. How did the Confederacy Fund its War Effort in the U.S. Civil War? History is Now Magazine.http://www.historyisnowmagazine.com/blog/2023/6/5/how-did-the-confederacy-fund-its-war-effort-in-the-us-civil-war Accessed 6/23/23.

24.  Josiah Gorgas. https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/history/us-history-biographies/josiah-gorgas  Accessed 6/23/23.

25.  Hess op cit 361.

26.  Consumer Price Index Calculator. https://www.in2013dollars.com/

27.  Goff op cit page 90

28.  Ferguson, Niall. The Ascent Of Money. A Financial History of the World. 10th Anniversary Edition. Penguin, New York, 2009. And Edwin C Bearrs. The Seizure of the Forts and Public Property in Louisiana.  Louisiana History (2:401‑409, Autumn 1961) 

http://penelope.uchicago.edu/Thayer/E/Gazetteer/Places/America/United_States/Louisiana/_Texts/LH/2/4/Seizure_of_the_Forts*.html

29.  Goff op cit pages 90-91 & 47-49

30.  Davis op cit chapter 10

31.  Goff op cit pages 41-2

32.  Goff op cit pages 107 & 40

33.  Davis op cit 307

George McClellan: Problematic U.S. Civil War Commander

Major General George McClellan was one of the central figures of the Civil War. He served as commander of the Department of Ohio, the Army of the Potomac, and was Commander-in-Chief of the Union Army for 5 months. Historically, his command decisions have been criticized and his personal qualities are examined minutely. He represents a paradox: a superbly prepared and highly intelligent man who, during his moment on the world stage, failed in almost every task he performed.

Lloyd W Klein explains.

George B. McClellan. Portrait by Mathew Brady.

Background

McClellan came from a wealthy, elite Philadelphia family.  His father was Dr George McClellan, a foremost surgeon of his day and the founder of Jefferson Medical College. A great grandfather was a brigadier general in the Revolutionary War. After attending the University of Pennsylvania for two years, he left to enroll at West Point, where he graduated second in his class at age 19 in 1846, losing the top spot because of weaker drawing skills. He was friends with aristocratic southerners including George Pickett, Cadmus Wilcox and AP Hill.

He was breveted a second lieutenant in the Corps of Engineers. During the Mexican War he served as an engineer building bridges for Winfield Scott’s army. He was frequently under fire and was breveted to first lieutenant and captain. Since his father was friends with General Scott, he received a coveted spot to perform reconnaissance for the general.

He returned to West Point as an engineering instructor after the war. He was given charge of various engineering projects. He was also sent on a secret mission to Santo Domingo by the Secretary of State to scout its military preparedness. In 1852 he helped to translate a manual on bayonet tactics from French. In 1853, he participated in land surveys to scout a transcontinental railroad route. The route he advised through the Cascade Mountains, Yakima Pass, was known to be impassable during the winter snow. The Governor of Washington territory, himself a top of the class graduate of West Point and a mathematics whiz, had made his own survey. He knew that McClellan hadn’t studied the situation carefully. Time has shown that he missed three greatly superior passes in the near vicinity, which were eventually used for railroads and interstate highways.

He was then appointed By Secretary of War Jefferson Davis as captain of the new First Cavalry Regiment, one of two that would be the proving grounds for the Civil War. Because he spoke French fluently, he was sent to be an observer during the Crimean War. There he conferred with military leaders and the royal families on both sides. He observed the siege of Sebastopol first-hand. His report was hailed for its brilliance. McClellan's observations and insights from the Crimean War played a role in shaping his views on military organization, logistics, and the importance of proper training. He was particularly impressed by the Allied forces' well-organized supply lines, medical services, and use of siege warfare. However, he totally missed the significance of how rifled weapons had changed military strategy, an error that would have substantial repercussions in the conflict ahead. McClellan wrote a cavalry manual and designed a saddle, called the McClellan saddle, which is still in use for ceremonies. This was a promising young man with a great future.

But the fact is, promotion in the small pre-war army was very slow, and McClellan was an ambitious man. At age 31, he resigned to become Chief Engineer of Illinois Central Railroad, a position with a huge increase in salary. There he would be promoted to Vice President and work with an obscure railroad lawyer named Abraham Lincoln.

McClellan was, frankly, bored with railroad management. He served as chief engineer and vice president of the Illinois Central Railroad, and then became president of the Ohio and Mississippi Railroad in 1860. McClellan supported the presidential campaign of Stephen A. Douglas in the 1860 election. He also married Mary Ellen Marcy, a woman who had fielded 8 prior proposals, rejecting 7 of them, including a prior one from McClellan; the man she had accepted was not liked by her family, so he withdrew. Finally McClellan asked again, and they were married in New York City in May 1860.

Start of the Civil War & Rapid Promotion

The firing at Fort Sumter changed the trajectory of a lot of people’s lives. For McClellan, it was transformative: he found himself a highly regarded and sought after authority on large scale war and tactics, having written two volumes on the subject. He was wanted by the Governors of 3 states to lead their militias, and he settled on Ohio. He was commissioned a major general in the regular army on Amy 14, 1861, outranking everyone except Lt. Gen. Winfield Scott, the general-in-chief. McClellan's rapid promotion was partly due to his acquaintance with Salmon P. Chase, Treasury Secretary and former Ohio governor and senator. Once again, political connections moved him rapidly to the top.

After losing First Manassas, Lincoln needed a military leader who could win battles. McClellan had several victories in western Virginia including Rich Mountain and Cheat Mountain, and was being hailed as the “Young Napoleon” and “Napoleon of the Present War” in the press. But the fact is, McClellan’s actions there showed a number of disturbing features that in retrospect were prescient. McClellan failed to attack at Cheat Mountain several times despite action being underway. Colonel Rosecrans was promised reinforcements but McClellan didn’t send them, forcing him to achieve victory on his own; McClellan’s report gave him no credit.  Another subordinate was warned to follow cautiously but then criticized in the report for moving slowly.

Positive Attributes

There can be no doubt that he was a fabulous administrator and logistician. He excelled in organizing and training the Union Army at the start of the war, preparing them for the battles ahead. His meticulous attention to detail and emphasis on discipline contributed to a well-structured and efficient force. Additionally, he implemented effective supply and transportation systems to support his troops. His skills in these administrative tasks were superb and are appropriately admired by all.

Criticisms as Commander in Chief

Throughout his tenure as a commander, McClellan consistently exhibited a tendency to overestimate the strength of his opponents and to be overly cautious in his decision-making, often erring on the side of preserving his own forces rather than aggressively engaging the enemy. McClellan was reluctant to begin his offensives, routinely delayed attacking, demanded an impossible number of reinforcements even though his army greatly outnumbered the enemy, displayed insubordination to the President and civilian leaders, allowed the enemy to escape repeatedly, and retreated several times despite not having lost a battle. He had an inability to create original or innovative ideas, despite being tremendously smart and a quick study. His cautious approach to battle and reluctance to take decisive offensive actions limited his overall success as a military leader.

Over-Cautiousness

Several instances highlight McClellan's consistent pattern of over-cautiousness, which led to missed opportunities and strategic setbacks:

• Peninsula Campaign: McClellan's Peninsula Campaign was marked by his excessive caution. Despite having a numerical advantage over Confederate General Robert E. Lee, McClellan moved slowly and hesitated to press his advantage, allowing Lee to consolidate his forces and ultimately repel McClellan's advances.

• Seven Days' Battles: During the Seven Days' Battles, McClellan's caution led him to withdraw his forces in the face of Lee's attacks, despite having numerical superiority. This retreat allowed Lee to successfully defend Richmond and avoid being decisively defeated.

• Maryland Campaign: After discovering Special Order #191, McClellan has been criticized traditionally as moving slowly. Even though McClellan had gained intelligence indicating that Lee's forces were divided, he still proceeded cautiously. However, recent scholarship has questioned the accuracy of this conclusion.

• Battle of Antietam: This battle became the single bloodiest day in American history, and McClellan's failure to exploit his opportunities to defeat Lee's army decisively was attributed to his caution.

• Following the Battle of Antietam, McClellan was slow to pursue Lee's retreating army, allowing them to escape across the Potomac River into Confederate territory. His hesitation to pursue and engage the enemy hindered the Union's success in taking advantage of its tactical success.

Repeated Inflated Estimates of Enemy Strength

McClellan’s propensity to inflate enemy troop numbers occurred so routinely that it’s beyond possibility that it wasn’t intentional, and perhaps psychologically motivated.

The pattern of inflating enemy troop numbers was a recurring theme that marked McClellan's career. McClellan doubled the number of troops he had defeated at Rich Mountain, making his victory appear spectacular. He tripled the number of actual troops facing him across the Potomac, leading to a crisis sense and elevation to commander in chief. In the Peninsula Campaign, the process reached its zenith: hyper-inflate the numbers of the enemy, lament about what was necessary to win, when it was impossible to provide that number to reluctantly proceed anyway, and blame superiors if victory wasn’t achieved.

Procrastination

McClellan’s fatal flaw as general was that he was viewed as a procrastinator. His continual delays and refusal to move against the Confederates allowed them to call in reinforcements and win key battles with less than half the manpower.  McClellan had a long history of delaying attacks. Maybe he thought that he had to plan in great detail before launching them. But these delays were never beneficial and never justifiable. His delay to initiate the battle at Antietam cost him a decisive victory and ultimately led to his dismissal.

He was an excellent administrative general, but as a tactician he was incapable of taking chances, and war is all about chances. Strategically he really wasn’t bad: Peninsula was an interesting idea but he did not follow through tactically. He wanted to cross the James, as Grant would do 2 years later, but was denied. He had a great advantage at Antietam and won, but he failed to pursue the enemy. He might have been incapable of responding creatively to the real time exigencies of battle.  He could not creatively adjust his plan. Thus, at Antietam, when his plan of assault did not unfold like a predetermined Napoleonic success, he was unable to develop any new concepts on the spot to adapt to the changed circumstances.

It is also possible that there were cynical benefits to General McClellan's exaggerated reports of the enemy's size. By consistently overestimating the enemy's strength, McClellan could have positioned himself as the savior of the Union, creating a narrative that he was the only one capable of defending against such a formidable foe. This could have enhanced his political stature and potentially garnered more support from certain factions. McClellan's tendency to exaggerate the enemy's strength could have provided him with a convenient excuse for his reluctance to engage in battle or take more aggressive actions. This allowed him to avoid the risks associated with decisive battles, while placing the blame on the perceived overwhelming enemy forces .And, by portraying the enemy as stronger than they actually were, McClellan might have been able to secure additional resources, troops, and supplies for his own forces. This could have allowed him to build up a larger and more well-equipped army, potentially boosting his own reputation in the process. Finally, the exaggerated reports could have been a way for McClellan to deflect blame for any failures or setbacks onto the supposedly formidable enemy forces. By doing so, he could have avoided taking responsibility for any missteps in his own strategy or decision-making.

Psychological Profile

Psychological profiling of historical figure is fraught with hazard. Nevertheless, historians have found McClellan to be an excellent subject for this kind of analysis. McClellan has been portrayed as “… proud, sensitive, overwrought, tentative, quick to exult and to despair”. He was a competent administrator and engineer who had no skill at winning battles. McClellan's actions and exaggerations might have been influenced not only by strategic considerations but also by his own ambitions and self-preservation. His reluctance to engage in battle can be attributed in part to his fear of failure. His job was to lead, he was supposed to be a great leader, but he was afraid to be wrong. McClellan was more concerned with not losing than with winning. In his mind, as the fate of the Union rested on his shoulders, he could not allow a defeat.

Stephen Sears wrote: “There is indeed ample evidence that the terrible stresses of commanding men in battle, especially the beloved men of his beloved Army of the Potomac, left his moral courage in tatters. Under the pressure of his ultimate soldier's responsibility, the will to command deserted him. Glendale and Malvern Hill found him at the peak of his anguish during the Seven Days, and he fled those fields to escape the responsibility. At Antietam, where there was nowhere for him to flee to, he fell into a paralysis of indecision.”

A fragile ego covered by conceit was reflected in many of his letters to his wife.

He had to build himself up because in fact he lacked self-confidence. McClellan often suggested that divine intervention had chosen him to save the Union. McClellan frequently thanked God for allowing him to be the deliverer of the nation. His letters to Ellen Marcy, his wife, have been widely quoted in this regard (see Table). Many of the letters were intentionally destroyed or burned in a fire after the war, and there is a great deal of speculation as to exactly why the ones that remained still exist. Allan Nevins wrote, "Students of history must always be grateful McClellan so frankly exposed his own weaknesses” in his memoirs.

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Some well-known quotes from his letters to his wife:

“I find myself in a new and strange position here: President, cabinet, Gen. Scott, and all deferring to me. By some strange operation of magic I seem to have become the power of the land … I almost think that were I to win some small success now I could become Dictator. . . . But nothing of that kind would please me. Therefore I won't be Dictator. Admirable self denial!”

“Half a dozen of the oldest made the remark . . . ‘Why how young you look — yet an old soldier!! ... It seems to strike everybody that I am very young. . . . Who would have thought when we were married that I should so soon be called upon to save my country?”

“The President is no more than a well-meaning baboon. I went to the White House directly after tea, where I found "The Original Gorilla", about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now.”

““It may be that at some distant day I too shall totter away from” Washington, “a worn out old soldier. . . . Should I ever become vainglorious & ambitious remind me of that spectacle.”

“I ought to take good care of these men. I believe they love me from the bottom of their hearts. I can see it in their faces when I pass among them.”

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Doris Kearns Goodwin wrote that a review of his personal correspondence during the war, especially with his wife, reveals “a tendency for self-aggrandizement and unwarranted self-congratulation.” McClellan thought of himself as the only man who could save the union, and was willing to sacrifice anything and anyone—mentors, colleagues, his own men—to further his ambition.  In that sense, George McClellan's memoirs and letters provide some indications of his personality and mindset, and a narcissistic tendency is suggested. But drawing definitive conclusions about his psychological condition, such as labeling him as a narcissist, solely based on these sources can be misleading.

In contradistinction, Lincoln had failed in life before; he made himself a success by hard work and careful thought, and wasn’t afraid of risk. McClellan had been handed everything, had always come out on top, and was afraid to fail. In war, as in much of life, fortune favors the bold. McClellan’s fear of failure and routine promotions on the basis of political connections would be his downfall.

Relationship with President Lincoln

The personal and professional conflict between General McClellan and President Lincoln that manifest in 1862, and continued into the election of 1864, is one of the fascinating subthemes of Lincoln’s presidency. Lincoln and General McClellan didn’t like one another and didn’t get along well. McClellan believed he had a superior education and family background; Lincoln knew he was being looked down upon, but with his superior emotional quotient, he knew that what was important was getting victories, and if this man could, then he would put up with him.

They originally met before the war: Lincoln was an attorney for the Illinois railroad and the two spent time together between cases. He saw Lincoln as socially inferior and intellectually not nearly on his level. He found the country stories Lincoln told to be below him.

Once the war began, Abraham Lincoln and George B. McClellan clashed repeatedly. McClellan constantly ignored Lincoln’s orders, and did not share his plans with anyone including the president. McClellan let it be known that he had contempt for Lincoln. He called him the ‘original gorilla’ in public. On November 13, 1861, Lincoln Seward and Hay stopped at McClellan’s home to visit with him. McClellan was out, so the trio waited for his return. After an hour, McClellan came in and was told by a porter that the guests were waiting. McClellan headed for his room without a word, and only after Lincoln waited another half-hour was the group informed of McClellan’s retirement to bed.

Historian William C. Davis wrote that in 1861, “believing what the press and an admiring circle of sycophants on his staff and high command said about him, Little Mac bristled at being subordinate to the civil authority, and especially to Lincoln, of whom he almost instantly developed a condescending and patronizing opinion. He not only regarded the president as his intellectual and social inferior, but also passed on that attitude to those around him – or even fostered it.”

Famously, President Lincoln came to visit General McClellan on October 3rd. As you can see from the photo by Alexander Gardner, the temperature of the meeting was frosty.  Abraham Lincoln spent four days travelling over the field, just two weeks after the guns fell silent. He met with McClellan, trying to prod his young Napoleon into action, met with other generals, and with thousands of wounded soldiers, Including both Union and Confederate. His trip was well-documented, and the photos of his visit are among the most famous of the entire war.

Lincoln expected McClellan to pursue Lee and engage him in a decisive battle as soon as possible. Although the Union outnumbered the Confederate army by almost three to one, McClellan did not move his army for over a month. McClellan overestimated the size of Lee’s force, suggesting that 100,000 troops were in his command, when he likely had just more than half that number. McClellan also noted that his requisitions for supplies had not been filled. Although traditionally these complaints are dismissed as a manufactured excuse, substantial documentation suggests that McClellan had a genuine supply crisis.

It may be that top Lincoln administration officials ruined his reputation intentionally for political reasons. Knowing that he was popular with the troops and a Democrat, they could see where 1864 was leading. That is not to say that McClellan wasn’t slow at times, but it may have been exaggerated in retrospect when he became Lincoln’s opponent.

What were McClellan’s political opinions about slavery, defeating the South, and his post bellum vision?

McClellan’s view on how the war should be prosecuted differed significantly from Mr. Lincoln’s views. McClellan was a Democrat. He was anti-emancipation. He made clear also his opposition to abolition or seizure of slaves as a war tactic, which put him at odds with the executive branch and some of his subordinates. He had a set of political beliefs almost completely at odds with the Republican Party, the party in power. Most of the officers in the United States Army were Democrats. The army was a conservative institution and many of these officers didn’t agree with the vision for the United States that many of the Republicans had, especially the radical Republicans in Congress, who even departed more radically from Lincoln.

What McClellan wanted to do was to restore the Union to what it had been. He was very happy with that Union. And that was not going to be possible during the war once it had gone past a certain point. McClellan was very clear about what kind of war he wanted. He wanted to beat the Rebels just enough to persuade them to come back under the Union. He didn’t want to slaughter their armies. He didn’t want to overturn their civilization, and he wanted to keep emancipation out of the picture.

McClellan had different views about race and southern aristocracy then we do today and that Lincoln had then: but he was not a traitor, and he did want to win the war, not lose it. McClellan emphasized the fact that he previously led the Union military effort in the War and that he was and remained committed to "the restoration of the Union in all its integrity" and that the massive sacrifices that the Union endured should not be in vain.

As he wrote to one influential Northern Democratic friend, and I’m quoting him here, “Help me to dodge the n____. I’m fighting to preserve the integrity of the Union.” That’s McClellan’s take on the war. He was not fighting to free the slaves, and he was not alone. McClellan almost never spoke of African Americans, and when he did it was always in disparaging terms. McClellan was a quiet racist, one who wanted to ensure that the Civil War ended soon so that the question of black emancipation would not become the leading element.

Now, it must be emphasized that up to that stage of the war, Lincoln was also highlighting union and not slavery. He downplayed emancipation because he thought it would alienate the border states, and he wanted to make sure that they stayed in line. After Antietam, Lincoln thought the North was ready for emancipation, but McClellan never changed his attitude.

Quotes from President Lincoln’s Letters to General McClellan

“After you left, I ascertained that less than twenty thousand unorganized men, without a single field battery, were all you designed to be left for the defense of Washington, and Manassas Junction … My explicit order that Washington should, by the judgment of all the commanders of Army Corps, be left entirely secure, had been neglected– It was precisely this that drove me to detain McDowell– … I do not forget that I was satisfied with your arrangement to leave Banks at Mannassas Junction; but when that arrangement was broken up, and nothing was substituted for it, of course I was not satisfied…”

“There is a curious mystery about the number of the troops now with you. When I telegraphed you on the 6th saying you had over a hundred thousand with you, I had just obtained from the Secretary of War, a statement, taken as he said, from your own returns, making 108.000 then with you, and en route to you. You now say you will have but 85.000, when all en route to you shall have reached you– How can the discrepancy of 23.000 be accounted for?” (April 7, 1862)

“And, once more let me tell you, it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow– I am powerless to help this– You will do me the justice to remember that I always insisted, that going down the Bay in search of a field, instead of fighting at or near Manassas, was only shifting, and not surmounting, a difficulty — that we would find the same enemy, and the same, or equal, intrenchments, at either place– The country will not fail to note — is now noting — that the present hesitation to move upon an intrenched enemy, is but the story of Manassas repeated–“

“You remember my speaking to you of what I called your over-cautiousness. Are you not over-cautious when you assume that you can not do what the enemy is constantly doing? Should you not claim to be at least his equal in prowess, and act upon the claim?” (October 13, 1862)

“Again, one of the standard maxims of war, as you know, is “to operate upon the enemy’s communications as much as possible without exposing your own.” You seem to act as if this applies against you, but can not apply in your favor.”

“I have just read your despatch about sore tongued and fatiegued horses. Will you pardon me for asking what the horses of your army have done since the battle of Antietam that fatigue anything?”

************************************************************************

The 1864 Presidential election

By the summer of 1864, the Civil War had gone on for over three years. Over 250,000 Union soldiers had been killed, with many more injured permanently. Victory was not yet in sight. Democrats knew that many of the policies of Lincoln  were not popular, including many of those we take today as the reason for the conflict, such as emancipation, the military draft, the use of black troops, and violations of civil liberties. Democrats further suggested that the Republicans were advocating in favor of miscegenation and trying to destroy the traditional race relations. They believed they could win, and famously, Lincoln thought that too.

But then the Democratic Party blundered. The convention adopted proposals by Copperheads like Clement  Vallandigham calling for a cease fire and a negotiated settlement to the war; but then they selected George McClellan as their candidate. His central argument was that he could win the war sooner and with fewer casualties than Lincoln & Grant. He did not run on a platform of surrender, as is often alleged.

To get the nomination, McClellan had to defeat his opponents Horatio Seymour, New York Governor, and Thomas Seymour, Connecticut governor. Both were real “peace” candidates. Once he was nominated McClellan repudiated the Democratic Party platform. As a result, whatever message intended to be sent to separate their views from Lincoln was garbled. McClellan’s campaign floundered as his repudiation of the peace plank in the Democratic platform provoked discord.

As late as August 23, Lincoln considered it “exceedingly probable” that he would not be reelected. He thought the copperheads would force McClellan into accepting a negotiated settlement, so he made his Cabinet secretly promise to cooperate with McClellan if he won the election to win the war by the time that McClellan will be inaugurated.

Many civil war histories suggest that the victories at Atlanta and the Overland Campaign changed public opinion from the summer of 1864, and surely they did. But a good part of the reason Lincoln was re-elected was that the Democratic Party self-destructed in the campaign.

History books gloss over the closeness of the popular vote. They cite that Lincoln received over 90% of the total electoral votes (212 versus 21 for McClellan). But a 10% margin is relatively close under the circumstances. McClellan ran against Abraham Lincoln, a sitting president, our greatest president, as the war was being won; and garnered 45% of the popular vote. Not only isn’t that pretty under the circumstances of voting against a sitting president in a war (the US has NEVER done this), but the Democratic Party of the 19th century was a fundamentally southern party.  In other words, McClellan got 9/20 votes in a population that was northern, running on a platform of stopping the war and reversing emancipation. Moreover, McClellan won 48% of the total vote in a bloc of states stretching from Connecticut to Illinois (Lincoln's home state); Lincoln underperformed in 1864 relative to 1860 in several crucial U.S. states (such as New York, Pennsylvania, and Indiana); and that the Republicans lost the Governorship in his (McClellan's) home state of New Jersey.

What do you think of George McClellan? Let us know below.

Now, read Lloyd’s article on the Battle of Fort Sumter and the beginning of the U.S. Civil War here.

References

• https://www.historynet.com/george-mcclellan/#:~:text=He%20graduated%20second%20in%20his,through%20often%20rugged%2C%20inhospitable%20terrain.

• https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-rocky-relationship-between-abraham-lincoln-and-george-b-mcclellan/

• https://ir.library.louisville.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2088&context=etd#:~:text=McClellan%20loved%20his%20troops%20and%20they%2C%20in%20turn%2C,of%20the%20relationships%20he%20developed%20while%20in%20command

• https://www.historynet.com/mcclellans-war-winning-strategy/

• https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/civil-war-gen-george-mcclellan-deemed-a-savior-then-a-failure/2011/09/21/gIQAfpF6SL_story.html

• https://www.wondriumdaily.com/american-civil-war-the-fault-lines-in-the-lincoln-mcclellan-relationship/   

• https://www.abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org/abraham-lincolns-contemporaries/abraham-lincoln-and-george-b-mcclellan/

• https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/article/the-rocky-relationship-between-abraham-lincoln-and-george-b-mcclellan/

• Sears, Stephen W. George B. McClellan: The Young Napoleon. New York: Da Capo Press, 1988. ISBN 0-306-80913-3.

• Sears, Stephen W. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1983. ISBN 0-89919-172-X.

• Bonekemper, Edward H. McClellan and failure. McFarland & Co, 2007

• Waugh, John C. Lincoln and McClellan: The Troubled Partnership Between a President and His General. Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2010

• Goodwin, Doris Kearns. Team of Rivals, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2005.

The Battle of Fort Sumter & the Beginning of the US Civil War

The firing on Fort Sumter was the immediate action that started the Civil War. Once the Confederates under PGT Beauregard fired on US Federal property, a line had been crossed and a rebellion had begun. At issue was whether federal property in a state that seceded was now property of the new government.

Charleston SC was the most important port on the Southeast coast. The harbor was defended by three federal forts: Sumter; Castle Pinckney, one mile off the city’s Battery; and heavily armed Fort Moultrie, on Sullivan’s Island.

Here, Lloyd W Klein looks at the beginning of the U.S. Civil War.

The attack on Fort Sumter by the Confederacy.

The Construction and Deed to the Fort

The island in Charleston harbor on which Fort Sumter is built was originally just a sand bar. In 1827, engineers performed measurements of the depths and concluded that it was a suitable location for a fort. Construction began in 1829. Seventy thousand tons of granite was transported from New England to build up an essentially artificial island. By 1834, a timber foundation that was several feet beneath the water had been laid. The fort was built in the center of the channel to dominate the entrance to the harbor. Along with the shore batteries at Forts Moultrie, Wagner, and Gregg, the idea was to cover the harbor from invaders. The brick fort was designed to be five-sided, 170 to 190 feet long, with walls five feet thick, standing 50 feet over the low tide mark, and to house 650 men and 135 guns in three tiers of gun emplacements. The majority of the gun emplacements faced out to sea, to cover the entrance to the harbor (not facing the city). Construction dragged on because of title issues, and then problems arose with funding such a large and technically challenging project. Unpleasant weather and disease made it worse. The exterior was finished but the interior and armaments were never completed. On December 17, 1836, South Carolina officially ceded all "right, title and, claim" to the site of Fort Sumter to the United States Government. For these reasons, at the time of the bombardment, not only was this a federal fort, but also it was legally land ceded by the state of South Carolina.

Fort Sumter was covered by a separate cession of land to the United States by the state of South Carolina, and covered in this resolution, passed by the South Carolina legislature in December of 1836.

Reports and Resolutions of the General assembly, Page 115, here: https://www.carolana.com/SC/Legislators/Documents/Reports_and_Resolutions_of_the_General_Assembly_of_South_Carolina_1836.pdf

This resolution was made in response to a private SC citizen claiming ownership, which was denied. There can be no clearer statement that Fort Sumter had been ceded to the US Government by the state of SC.

https://studycivilwar.wordpress.com/2013/04/14/who-owned-fort-sumter/comment-page-1/#comments

In 1805, a prior land resolution of the SC legislature turning over all of the forts in the harbor to the US Government was made. Sumter did not exist at that time, so arguably it didn’t apply, although the language would be inclusive. It can be found on pages 501-502 here: https://books.google.com/books?id=S7E4AAAAIAAJ&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

South Carolina had freely ceded property in Charleston Harbor to the federal Government in 1805, upon the express condition that "the United States... within three years... repair the fortifications now existing thereon or build such other forts or fortifications as may be deemed most expedient by the Executive of the United States on the same, and keep a garrison or garrisons therein." Failure to comply with this condition on the part of the Government would render "this grant or cession... void and of no effect." Hence, continued development was a condition, which did occur in spurts.

The Crisis Begins

On December 26, 1860, only six days after South Carolina seceded from the Union, Major Robert Anderson abandoned the indefensible Fort Moultrie, spiking its large guns, burning its gun carriages, and taking its smaller cannon with him. He secretly relocated companies E and H (127 men, 13 of them musicians) of the 1st U.S. Artillery to Fort Sumter on his own initiative, without orders from his superiors, because it could not be defended from a land invasion. The fort was still only partially built and fewer than half of the cannons that should have been available were in place.

In a letter delivered January 31, 1861, South Carolina Governor Francis W Pickens demanded that President Buchanan surrender Fort Sumter because "I regard that possession is not consistent with the dignity or safety of the State of South Carolina." Over the next few months repeated calls for the evacuation of Fort Sumter from the government of South Carolina were ignored.

In February 1861 South Carolina's Attorney General, Isaac Hayne sent a letter to the U.S. Secretary of War, John Holt about their intent to take possession of Fort Sumter and wished to negotiate monetary compensation threatening that if the United States refused to vacate, then force would be used to seize it. Holt responded that the United States' interest in Sumter is not that of a proprietor but that of a sovereign which "has absolute jurisdiction over the fort and the soil on which it stands. This jurisdiction consists in the authority to 'exercise exclusive legislation' over the property referred to. and said "the President is, however, relieved from the necessity of further pursuing this inquiry by the fact that, whatever may be the claim of South Carolina to this fort, he has no constitutional power to cede or surrender it. The property of the United States has been acquired by force of public law, and can only be disposed of under the same solemn sanctions. The President, as the head of the executive branch of the Government only, can no more sell and transfer Fort Sumter to South Carolina than he can sell and convey the Capitol of the United States to Maryland, or to any other State or individual seeking to possess it."

Realizing that the garrison at Fort Sumter was undermanned and undersupplied, General Winfield Scott, the General-in-Chief of the US Army, sent the Star of the West to reinforce Anderson. On January 9, 1861, several weeks after South Carolina had seceded from the United States but before other states had done so to form the Confederacy, Star of the West arrived at Charleston Harbor to resupply troops and supplies to the garrison at Fort Sumter. The ship was fired upon by cadets from the Citadel Academy and was hit three times. Although Star of the West suffered no major damage, her captain, John McGowan, considered it to be too dangerous to continue and left the harbor. The mission was abandoned, and Star of the West headed for her home port of New York Harbor.  Even this minimal attempt at strengthening the fort was resisted (Mc266).  President Buchanan had been lukewarm about defending Charleston harbor in the first place and had seriously considered succumbing to southern popular opinion and ordering the defenders back to the indefensible Fort Moultrie.  He had only agreed to this single ship expedition after a cabinet shake-up bringing hardliners Edwin Stanton and Jeremiah Black to his advisory group. Yet in response to this attack on a federal ship, which might itself have triggered the war, he did nothing.

Over the next few months, Jefferson Davis was named president of the Confederacy and Abraham Lincoln inaugurated as US president. Confederate Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard was sent to lead the Confederate forces in Charleston, where his command included several thousand state militia and a few dozen seacoast guns and mortars. Davis sent commissioners to Washington to negotiate transfer of the fort. Anderson prepared the fort for battle as best as possible: remarkably, of the 60 guns placed in the fort, only 6 were capable of being turned around to face the town.

Lincoln searched for a political solution for the next 6 weeks. Most of his cabinet, including Scott, advised that he pull the troops out of Fort Sumter because it was indefensible. William Seward, Secretary of State, Simon P. Cameron, Secretary of War, and Gideon Welles, Secretary of the Navy favored withdrawal. Supporting the fort would require a military force comprised of both army and navy units way beyond what existed. But Salmon P. Chase, Secretary of the Treasury and Montgomery Blair, the Postmaster General, argued that surrender would diminish morale and would lead to official recognition of the Confederacy. Only Blair opposed the withdrawal firmly because it would convince the rebels that the US administration lacked determination and firmness, would dishearten the Southern Unionists and push the foreign countries to recognize the Confederacy de facto. Moreover, the northern media called on Lincoln to make good his inaugural promise to defend federal property. Lincoln concluded that if the Union troops evacuated Fort Sumter, secession would be a fait accompli.

Lincoln was aware that a large - scale attempt to supply Fort Sumter by firing warships would result in the North as aggressor. It would unite the South and make Lincoln accountable for breaking out a war. Blair provided a person who would find a solution to the problem: Gustavus V. Fox. Fox suggested to supply Fort Sumter via some motorized barges while the US warships, off shore, would intervene only the Confederate guns would fire on the barges. Thus, he sent supplies only, while the warships would be ready to intervene if the Confederate guns had fired on the flotilla. If the Confederates had fired on the unarmed motorized barges hauling supplies only, they would be accountable for having attacked a humanitarian relief mission. At a cabinet meeting on March 28, 1861, the decision was made to send a small flotilla of vessels loaded with supplies. Realizing that Anderson's command would run out of food by April 15, 1861, President Lincoln ordered a fleet of ships, under the command of Gustavus V. Fox, to attempt entry into Charleston Harbor and supply Fort Sumter. It was plainly recognized that this small group of ships could not enter the harbor by surprise and would not be able to reach the fort unless the South Carolina batteries allowed their unfettered passage.  (https://www.usni.org/magazines/naval-history-magazine/2011/march/sumter-conundrum). Lincoln told Pickens the ships were on their way for re-supply.

Pickens contacted Robert Toombs, the CSA Secretary of State, Robert Toombs, who advised Davis that he was being set up by Lincoln and tricked into starting the war. Nevertheless, a Confederate cabinet meeting on April 9 endorsed Davis’s order to Beauregard to reduce the fort before its arrival. Fearing that a lack of action would revive Southern Unionism, Davis decided the Federal presence had to go, that is, Brigadier General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard was authorized to use the force to surrender Fort Sumter. Retrospectively, Davis would have been wise to have taken Toombs’ advice.  As a fort built to keep out ships, it served no purpose at that moment other than to allow Lincoln to use it as bait to trick the Confederates into starting the war, handing Lincoln reason/pretext and to claim the Confederates fired first.  But Davis  in fact wanted war; it was the only possible way to convince the ambivalent Upper South and border states to secede and join the CSA. Davis had considered attacking Fort Pickens instead, but Braxton Bragg correctly objected because Pickens would have been tough to attack by amphibious warfare and, unlike Sumter, had a secure sea lifeline.

On April 6, 1861, the first ships began to set sail for their rendezvous off the Charleston Bar. The ships assigned were the steam sloops-of-war USS Pawnee and USS Powhatan, transporting motorized launches and about 300 sailors; the USS Pocahontas, Revenue Cutter USRC Harriet Lane, and the steamer Baltic transporting about 200 troops, composed of companies C and D of the 2nd U.S. Artillery; and three hired tugboats with added protection against small arms fire to be used to tow troop and supply barges directly to Fort Sumter. However, the Pocahontas never did make it due to multiple countermanding orders. The first to arrive was Harriet Lane, on the evening of April 11, 1861.

Events Leading to the Bombardment

Also on April 11, Beauregard sent three officers to demand the surrender of the fort: Senator/Colonel James Chesnut, Jr., Captain Stephen D. Lee (later general), and Lieutenant A. R. Chisolm. Anderson declined, and the aides returned to report to Beauregard. After Beauregard had consulted the Confederate Secretary of War, Leroy Walker, he sent the aides back to the fort and authorized Chesnut to decide whether the fort should be taken by force. Anderson, stalling for time, waited until 3 AM April 12 to tell them he would not leave the fort. They then returned to Fort Johnson where Chesnut ordered the firing to begin. So it was that on April 12, 1861 at 4:30 AM, the Civil War began when Confederate batteries opened on the fort. Although Edmund Ruffin, the noted Virginian agronomist and secessionist, claimed that he fired the first shot on Fort Sumter, and did, in fact, fire a signal shot, Lieutenant Henry S. Farley, commanding a battery of two 10-inch siege mortars on James Island actually fired the first shot at 4:30 a.m. No attempt was made by the Union to return the fire for more than two hours because there were no fuses for their explosive shells, which means that they could not explode. Only solid iron balls could be used. At about 7:00 a.m., Captain Abner Doubleday, the fort's second in command, was given the honor of firing the Union's first shot, in defense of the fort. Although he did not invent baseball as the Mills Commission erroneously concluded, in every other way, his life was eventful and fulfilling.

During the bombardment, according to the diary of Mary Chesnut, the Senator’s wife, and other accounts, Charleston residents along what is now known as The Battery, sat on balconies drinking salutes to the start of the hostilities.

The bombardment lasted for 34 hours. The Union return fire was intentionally slow to conserve its ammunition.  The next morning, the fort was surrendered. During the attack, the Union colors fell. Lt. Norman J. Hall risked his life to put them back up, burning off his eyebrows permanently. A Confederate soldier bled to death having been wounded by a misfiring cannon. One Union soldier died and another was mortally wounded during the 47th shot of a 100-shot salute, given after the surrender. For this reason, the salute was shortened to 50 shots.

PGT Beauregard

PGT Beauregard was the perfect combination of military engineer and charismatic Southern leader needed at that time and place.  It is highly suggestive that a man of Beauregard’s accomplishments was there at Charleston – before a war had started. Its also interesting that the South Carolina militia had been called out and that they had cannonballs with fuses but the US Army in the fort did not. These and other factors demonstrate that the new CSA was prepared for a battle. The South Carolina Militia had been in position for months. They were there when Citadel cadets fired on the Star of the West on January 9, 1861. They were on duty the previous December when Anderson abandoned Fort Moultrie for Sumter.

Beauregard was the first Confederate general officer, appointed a brigadier general in the Provisional Army of the Confederate States on March 1, 1861.  His brother in law, James Slidell, was instrumental in convincing Davis to make this appointment. To me, the idea that the Union escalated violence to provoke the war is odd considering that the CSA had created an army at least 6 weeks before firing on Sumter. After the Mexican War, during which he contributed at least as much as Captain Robert E Lee did in terms of reconnaissance and strategy, his positions involved engineering in ports so he was the perfect man for this mission. He had recently been named superintendent of West Point January 23 1861, but these orders were revoked by the Federal Government 5 days later when Louisiana seceded. He returned to New Orleans with the hopes of being named commander of the Louisiana state army. On July 21, he was promoted to full general in the Confederate Army, one of only seven appointed to that rank; his date of rank made him the fifth most senior general, behind Samuel Cooper, Albert Sidney Johnston, Robert E. Lee, and Joseph E. Johnston. Beauregard was honored in the South for its first victory. He was ordered to direct the troops at Bull Run.

Anderson had been Beauregard’s artillery instructor at West Point in 1837, and Beauregard was serving as superintendent there until secession. Anderson told Washington that Beauregard would guarantee that South Carolina's actions be exercised with "skill and sound judgment." Beauregard wrote to the Confederate government that Anderson was a "most gallant officer". He sent several cases of fine brandy and whiskey and boxes of cigars to Anderson and his officers at Sumter, but Anderson ordered that the gifts be returned.

Aftermath

The state legislature appointed Braxton Bragg on February 20, 1861.Bragg had been a colonel in the Louisiana militia. Aware that Beauregard might resent him, Bragg offered him the rank of colonel. Instead Beauregard enrolled as a private in the "Orleans Guards", a battalion of French Creole aristocrats. At the same time, he communicated with Slidell and the newly chosen President Davis, angling for a senior position in the new Confederate States Army. Rumors that Beauregard would be placed in charge of the entire Army infuriated Bragg.  Their personal animosity was one of the subthemes of the western theater for the next 4 years.

Anderson’s valor and commitment to duty was recognized in the Union.  The Fort Sumter Flag became a popular patriotic symbol after Major Anderson returned North with it. The flag is still displayed in the fort's museum. The Star of the West took all the garrison members to New York City. There they were welcomed and honored with a parade on Broadway.

What do you think of the events at Fort Sumter? Let us know below.

Now, if you missed it, read Lloyd’s piece on how the Confederacy funded its war effort here.

The Maryland Campaign of 1862 in the U.S. Civil War

The Maryland Campaign was the first invasion of Union territory by General Robert E Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. The Eastern Theater in 1862 had gone very well for the Confederacy. Southern leadership hoped that a victory on northern soil would provide unassailable proof that their new nation was solid and strong, perhaps bringing Great Britain in to mediate a peace agreement.

Lloyd W Klein explains.

Abraham Lincoln and George McClellan at Antietam, Maryland, October 3, 1862.

Consequences of Second Manassas

The Confederate victory at Second Manassas August 28-30, 1862 followed victories in The Valley Campaign and the Peninsula. The casualties incurred by the Army of the Potomac included 14,000 killed or wounded of 62,000 engaged, compared to about half of that for the Army of Northern Virginia. Then on September 1, Stonewall Jackson defeated a Union cohort retreating from the battlefield, resulting in the deaths of 2 iconic Union generals. The Battle of Chantilly further supported the notion that the Confederate was invincible.

General Pope was relieved of command and sent to Minnesota, never to be heard from again. A subordinate would state about Pope, “I dare not trust myself to speak of this commander [Pope] as I feel and believe. Suffice to say ... that more insolence, superciliousness, ignorance, and pretentiousness were never combined in one man.” Pope would blame Fitz-John Porter for the loss, even though that wasn’t the case; Porter would be heard from again at Antietam but his career would be destroyed soon after.

It would be hard to imagine what President Lincoln was going through at that moment. After a year plus of fighting, none of his generals had ever defeated the Rebels in the eastern theater, although General Halleck had done well enough in the west, thanks in large part to a crazy general named Sherman and a drunken one named Grant. The backbiting in the army was at full swing, the blockade was having only a moderate effect, and his diplomat to Britain, Charles Francis Adams, was afraid that PM Gladstone would force negotiations to end the conflict. The soldiers who had been enlisted for one year were now done unless they wanted to re-enlist. Casualties were high and there was a pervasive sense of incompetence at the top of the military leadership.

And even worse, General Lee was rumored to have crossed the Potomac on September 3rd. The United States was being invaded, the Union army had no commander, and the national mid-term elections were coming up in 2 months. President Lincoln had a serious crisis on his hands, perhaps the most serious threat to the United States in our history.

General George McClellan

Following the Peninsula Campaign, Lincoln had fired McClellan for his incompetence as a general and his arrogant attitude. But now, 6 months later, Lincoln grudgingly called McClellan back into action in defense of Washington. Lincoln felt compelled to take this step because McClellan had the confidence of the soldiers. In the early stages of his command, McClellan was able to build up the Union army into a more powerful unit than the Confederacy had faced at Bull Run. He was really a brilliant administrator and he had amassed a well trained and supplied army, had planned a clever strategy to take Richmond, and his army greatly admired him. Despite these organizational successes, his apparent slowness, almost an unwillingness, to fight a battle slowed the war beyond what Lincoln could politically accept.

His repeated unforced retreats in the Peninsula led to a lack of confidence. But now, Lincoln needed a general to meet an imminent threat and he went back to McClellan. McClellan was very popular among the soldiers and the military. The parallels are really very interesting with the one at the onset of the Gettysburg campaign, when Hooker was dismissed on the eve of battle during an invasion after a large loss in Virginia.

It is believed that McClellan purposely withheld his men from helping Pope at Second Manassas.  In late August, two full corps of the Army of the Potomac had arrived in Alexandria, but McClellan would not allow them to advance to Manassas because of what he considered inadequate artillery, cavalry, and transportation support. He was accused by his political opponents of deliberately undermining Pope's position. But he is especially criticized by historians for his letter to his wife on August 10, "Pope will be badly thrashed within two days & ... they will be very glad to turn over the redemption of their affairs to me. I won't undertake it unless I have full & entire control." He told Abraham Lincoln on August 29 that it might be wise "to leave Pope to get out of his scrape, and at once use all our means to make the capital perfectly safe.”

After his severe defeat, Pope was relieved of command, McClellan reinstated. Lee’s invasion of Maryland and the Battle of Antietam occurred just 3 weeks later.

General Lee

After Second Manassas, General Lee enjoyed widespread popular acclaim and the confidence of the president and his cabinet. He had turned every battle into a victory, defeating two union commanders in just a few months. While supplies and armaments were in short supply, at this stage they seemed adequate.  It was a propitious moment to plan an invasion of the north. But with autumn coming, and the events it would bring, Lee had to move quickly and efficiently.

He had two excellent Corps Commanders in Longstreet and Jackson. His division commanders were also terrific, but their spirit was high, and their personalities clashed with their superiors. Still, success tends to dampen such disagreements.

Lee had these objectives with an invasion of the North:

• To move the focus of fighting away from the South and into Federal territory.

• Recruit in western Maryland and bring secession leaning citizens hope

• Achieve a military victory in the north,

• Perhaps could lead to the capture of the Federal capital in Washington, D.C.

• Confederate success could also influence impending Congressional elections in the North and

• Persuade European nations to recognize the Confederate States of America. 

This was the single moment in the war that Lee was truly in the ascendancy. Unlike the Gettysburg campaign 9 months later, which was a desperate move, this invasion made military and political sense. This likely was the real high water mark of the confederacy. Clearly Lee recognized that Stonewall Jackson thrived on independent action especially attack situations, and placed him in that position at Harpers Ferry. He also saw Longstreet as embodying the main army, as an attacking defender, and used him for that purpose in the campaign.

The Campaign Begins

Lee started off September 3 and crossed the Potomac at two fords west of Washington.  His army moved to Frederick, camping in a field 2 miles south of the town at Best’s Farm.

The idea for the invasion was well conceived. Although many modern day civil war enthusiasts consider this a terrible idea and suggest that the Confederacy should have stayed on defense, not fritter away their resources. Lee actually had a bold plan that few civil war buffs know about, in large part because it didn’t work. Lee's invasion of Maryland was intended to run simultaneously with an invasion of Kentucky by the armies of Braxton Bragg and Edmund Kirby Smith. Lee is typically criticized as lacking that kind of vision in coordinating attacks, as Grant for example had. But this is the case that proves that criticism wrong.

Fredrick, Maryland is centrally placed between Washington and Baltimore. The B& O RR set up a supply line to that town. It is also well located to Harper’s Ferry. And, it was the new capital of Maryland when it removed from Baltimore. It today is a very cute small town; the National Medical Civil War Museum is located there. This was appropriate, as the town was overfilled with the wounded after Antietam.

In September 1862, Confederate forces crossed the Potomac River at several places. Here are the main crossing points utilized by Lee's army prior to the Battle of Antietam:

• White's Ford: Located near Leesburg, Virginia, White's Ford was the major crossing point used by Lee's army as they entered Maryland (see drawing). They crossed the Potomac River here on September 4-6, 1862, and began their advance into Union territory.

• Cheek’s Ford: Upstream of White’s Ford, also was used by Confederate forces

• Noland's Ferry: Situated downstream from White's Ford, Noland's Ferry was another crossing point used by Lee's forces. They crossed the Potomac here on September 7-8, 1862, continuing their movement into Maryland.

Lee wanted to use Leesburg as his stepping off point to get to Frederick. The turnpike leading out of Snickers Gap goes to Leesburg, This turnpike was an old Indian trail that white settlers had widened and had become the main thoroughfare between the Shenandoah and Loudon County. Up to this point, Lee was using main roads for supply lines, which was clever strategically, as there were no railroads except as connected to Harper’s Ferry.

Lee was moving to attack Harpers Ferry, which is west of Frederick. He was not moving to advance on the big eastern cities. It is a fable that General Lee’s invasions had major cities as targets. His supply lines were too tenuous to try: he couldn’t have held them, in any case.

Harpers Ferry was a critical strategic point early in the war. It was the north-south crossroads from the Shenandoah Valley to Western Maryland, and the joining of the Potomac and Shenandoah Rivers. It contained a large arsenal and was a concentration for military manufacturers. All of these factors played key roles in why it was a crucial military goal. In fact, control of the town changed 8 times during the war, remaining in Union control for most of it.

Surrounded on three sides by steep heights, the terrain surrounding the town made it nearly impossible to defend; all one had to do with take the heights and shell the town until it surrendered. Stonewall Jackson once said he would rather “take the place 40 times than undertake to defend it once.”

The Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal were crucial supply lines connecting the east with the west, and they ran right through town. These assets were the real reasons why Harpers Ferry was so strategically important.  If you take Harpers Ferry the RR is cut in half and the east can’t get supplies to the west without a large detour. And most importantly, Lee could then use this town as his supply depot for further operations deeper into Maryland. In the Gettysburg campaign, Lee skipped this step and instead went further west, in order not to have to hold territory. This decision helped him speed up on the way to Gettysburg, but could have led to disaster on the retreat.

McClellan Takes Command

General McClellan assumed command of an army that was truly leaderless. When McClellan took charge of the Union forces on Sept. 1, he inherited four separate armies, thousands of untrained recruits and numerous other small commands that needed to be made ready in a hurry. To further complicate matters, three of his senior commanders had been ordered relieved of duty, charged with insubordination against Pope.

McClellan knew that Lee was in his northwest and moved, supposedly slowly, to that region. By the time he arrived in Frederick on September 13, Lee had been gone for 4 days. Classic histories portray McClellan's army as moving lethargically, averaging only 6 miles a day.

McClellan commanded in theory 28 cavalry regiments. But the disastrous Manassas campaign had worn out the horses of almost half the Union regiments, while most of the remainder were stranded at Hampton Roads by gale-force winds. For the first week of the campaign, McClellan could only count on perhaps 1,500 cavalry from two regiments and a few scattered squadrons from his old army to challenge some 5,000 Confederate cavalry soldiers screening Lee’s army.

In the week it took for Lee's army to march to Frederick, McClellan's army traveled an equal distance to redeploy on the north side of Washington. This was accomplished as he reshuffled commands, had his officers under charges reinstated and prepared to fill out his army with untrained recruits. Although he is rightly criticized for having “the slows”, criticisms of his aggressiveness in this campaign have not held up to in depth scholarship.

Special Order #191

Lee and the Confederate Army bivouacked on the Best Farm, about 2 miles south of Frederick, near the Monocacy River. This site would 2 years later be the location of the Battle of Monocacy but on September 9, 1862, the Union army was nowhere around. On the farm field showed in the photo, General Lee set up headquarters and had orders written that laid out the campaign plans for the next couple of weeks. Special Order #191 was written here, and couriers were directed to bring copies to the corps and crucial division leaders.

In Special Order #191, General Lee outlined the routes to be taken and the timing for the attack of Harpers Ferry. It provided specific details of the movements his army would take during the invasion of Maryland.

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“Special Orders, No. 191

Hdqrs. Army of Northern Virginia

September 9, 1862

The citizens of Fredericktown being unwilling while overrun by members of this army, to open their stores, to give them confidence, and to secure to officers and men purchasing supplies for benefit of this command, all officers and men of this army are strictly prohibited from visiting Fredericktown except on business, in which cases they will bear evidence of this in writing from division commanders. The provost marshal in Fredericktown will see that his guard rigidly enforces this order.

Major Taylor will proceed to Leesburg, Virginia, and arrange for transportation of the sick and those unable to walk to Winchester, securing the transportation of the country for this purpose. The route between this and Culpepper Court-House east of the mountains being unsafe, will no longer be traveled. Those on the way to this army already across the river will move up promptly; all others will proceed to Winchester collectively and under command of officers, at which point, being the general depot of this army, its movements will be known and instructions given by commanding officer regulating further movements.

The army will resume its march tomorrow, taking the Hagerstown road. General Jackson's command will form the advance, and, after passing Middletown, with such portion as he may select, take the route toward Sharpsburg, cross the Potomac at the most convenient point, and by Friday morning take possession of the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad, capture such of them as may be at Martinsburg, and intercept such as may attempt to escape from Harpers Ferry.

General Longstreet's command will pursue the same road as far as Boonsborough, where it will halt, with reserve, supply, and baggage trains of the army.

General McLaws, with his own division and that of General R. H. Anderson, will follow General Longstreet. On reaching Middletown will take the route to Harpers Ferry, and by Friday morning possess himself of the Maryland Heights and endeavor to capture the enemy at Harpers Ferry and vicinity.

General Walker, with his division, after accomplishing the object in which he is now engaged, will cross the Potomac at Cheek's Ford, ascend its right bank to Lovettsville, take possession of Loudoun Heights, if practicable, by Friday morning, Key's Ford on his left, and the road between the end of the mountain and the Potomac on his right. He will, as far as practicable, cooperate with General McLaws and Jackson, and intercept retreat of the enemy.

General D. H. Hill's division will form the rear guard of the army, pursuing the road taken by the main body. The reserve artillery, ordnance, and supply trains, &c., will precede General Hill.

General Stuart will detach a squadron of cavalry to accompany the commands of Generals Longstreet, Jackson, and McLaws, and, with the main body of the cavalry, will cover the route of the army, bringing up all stragglers that may have been left behind.

The commands of Generals Jackson, McLaws, and Walker, after accomplishing the objects for which they have been detached, will join the main body of the army at Boonsborough or Hagerstown.

Each regiment on the march will habitually carry its axes in the regimental ordnance—wagons, for use of the men at their encampments, to procure wood &c.

By command of General R. E. Lee

R.H. Chilton, Assistant Adjutant General”

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Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson was to lead the advance and capture Harper’s Ferry. DH Hill was designated to guard the rear. General Longstreet was to encircle the towns and roads leading to Harpers Ferry. Jackson was to take Harpers Ferry while the rest of Lee's army was posted at Boonsboro under command of Maj. Gen. James Longstreet. Lee hoped that after taking Harper's Ferry to secure his rear, he could carry out an invasion of the Union, wrecking the Monocacy aqueduct, before turning his attention to Baltimore, Philadelphia, or Washington, D.C. itself. Unlike the Pennsylvania Campaign, Lee had a real plan. Lee did not expect to be attacked by McClellan at this vulnerable moment. He was hiding at Boonsboro precisely to keep McClellan guessing. He could not know that McClellan knew where he was.

The places where parts of the army were sent controlled the roads into and out of Harpers Ferry. Martinsburg holds the road across from Whites Ford. Boonsboro hold the road north of Harpers Ferry.  Once Lee’s various divisions were in place, Harpers Ferry was in essence surrounded.

Lieutenant Colonel Robert H. Chilton, Lee’s assistant adjutant general (chief of staff), wrote out 8 copies of the order, 1 to each of the generals named and 1 to President Davis. At the time that Special Order #191 was written, Hill was under the command of Jackson, his brother-in-law. Jackson personally copied the document for Hill, because once the army crossed into Maryland, the order specified that Hill was to exercise independent command as the rear guard. For this reason, Jackson copied and sent Hill the order because he didn’t know if Chilton had done so. But, since Special Order #191 conveyed Hill’s having an independent command once entering Maryland, Chilton had in fact sent Hill a copy. DH Hill received only the letter from General Jackson, and never received the copy written by Chilton. Since he had received his orders, no one was concerned that a copy had been lost.

Famously, the order was lost, and was found 4 days later by men under General Alpheus Williams.

https://emergingcivilwar.com/2022/02/24/who-lost-the-lost-order/

and later found by the Union army about a half mile north and east of this location.

https://www.rebellionresearch.com/special-order-191-ruse-of-war-part-1

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/the-insignificance-of-special-order-191

When General McClellan came into the possession of Special Order #191, he had an accurate and timely picture of exactly where the components of the Confederate army were located and what routes they were going to be using in the next several days. He knew that the Confederate army was divided and he knew exactly where they were. Lee had dangerously split his army into five parts. Three columns had converged on Harpers Ferry to capture the Federal garrison there, a fourth column was in Hagerstown, and a fifth column was acting as a rear guard near Boonesboro, Md.

Most traditional histories of the Antietam Campaign assert that McClellan was given Gen. Robert E. Lee's plans in Frederick, Md. at noon, Sept. 13. The narrative states that he waited 18 hours before acting on the find. By waiting before taking advantage of this intelligence and reposition his forces, he squandered the best opportunity in the war to defeat Lee conclusively.

These criticisms stem from the belief that McClellan moved too slowly and cautiously to attack Lee. They assert that when a copy of Lee’s plans fell into McClellan’s hands, the Union general wasted precious hours before advancing. Politicians from the 1860s onward and countless historians have claimed he could have easily destroyed Lee’s army during the campaign and ended the war in 1862, sparing the country another two and a half years of bloody conflict.

A more recent re-evaluation disputes this sequence of events entirely, citing long overlooked evidence that McClellan moved quickly and there was no 18-hour delay. Some historians believe that for this reason, the loss of the Special Order #191 wasn’t as decisive as history makes it out to be. That it had in fact little impact on subsequent events. Gene Thorp in a 2012 article in The Washington Post cited evidence that the vanguard of Army of the Potomac was in motion all day on the 13th due to orders McClellan issued. After the war, McClellan held to the claim that he acted immediately to put his armies on the move.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/in-defense-of-mcclellan-at-antietam-a-contrarian-view/2012/09/06/79a0e5cc-f131-11e1-892d-bc92fee603a7_story.html

Early in the morning of Sept. 13, most of the Union army was on the move to Frederick, Md. including McClellan, who was relocating his headquarters there from Urbana. At the conclusion of the march, a copy of Lee’s orders was found in an open field. What time this "Lost Order" was found, and when McClellan received it, has been relatively unchallenged until recently.

In "Landscape Turned Red," Stephen Sears asserts that McClellan verified before noon that the papers were legitimate, then exhibited his usual excessive caution and failed to move his army for 18 hours. To back up this theory, Sears cites a telegram that McClellan sent to Abraham Lincoln at "12 M" — which Sears says stands for meridian or noon — in which McClellan confidently informs the president that he has the plans of the enemy and that "no time shall be lost" in attacking Lee. In summary, the traditional view is:

1. McClellan had the Lost Order by noon as is proven by the telegram from him to Lincoln that is dated "12M" for Meridian.

2. McClellan waited 18 hours before moving his troops after finding the Lost Orders

The original telegram received by War Department is clearly dated "12 Midnight". After the book's publication, though, the original telegram receipt was discovered by researcher Maurice D'Aoust in the Lincoln papers at the Library of Congress. It shows that the telegram was sent at midnight (the word was written out) — a full 12 hours later than Sears thought. D'Aoust points this out in the October 2012 issue of Civil War Times in an article entitled " 'Little Mac' Did Not Dawdle."

In the disputed telegraph, McClellan wrote Lincoln, "We have possession of Catoctin [Mountain]," which is important because those two passes were still held by the Confederates at noon. The Braddock Pass was not gained until 1 p.m. and the Jefferson Pass further south was not taken until near sunset. This is evidence that there was no noon message.

McClellan is known to have been riding through the town of Frederick at the 11 am hour (see photo), to raucous crowds, thrilled to see him. Its hard to square this with being told of the orders and telling President Lincoln about it less than an hour later.

The Lost Order was not found until after the 12th Corps, of which the 27th Indiana Regiment belonged, ended its morning march. At least five accounts show that the Corps completed its march about noon, which would make it impossible for McClellan to have written and sent a telegraph that contained information about the Lost Order at the same time it was found. The commander of the unit that found the order notes that it was found after its march ended at noon and that it was carried to army staff soon thereafter.

McClellan issued orders at 3 p.m. for his cavalry chief to verify that the Lost Order was not a trick. It seems out of character for someone who is normally considered so cautious to confidently inform Lincoln of the find three hours before he tried to confirm the accuracy of its contents. From this, we can deduce that McClellan had the orders at 3 pm or sooner but after noon.

The Signal Corps reported that "in the evening" it transmitted a message from Lincoln to McClellan, and a return message from McClellan to Lincoln. The report mentions no other transmittal of information between the two men at any other time of the day.

McClellan had the vanguard of the army, Burnside's 9th Corps, on the move at 3:30 p.m. These men filled the road west to Lee's rear guard at South Mountain well into the night. Near sundown, at 6:20 p.m., he began to issue orders for the rest of his army to move, with most units instructed to be marching at sunrise. (They were roused from sleep at 3 a.m.) In the midst of this activity, at midnight, the general telegraphed the president to tell him what was going on.

By 9 a.m. on Sept. 14, the first troops had climbed South Mountain and met the Confederate rear-guard in battle. By nightfall, McClellan's army carried the heights and forced a defeated Lee to find a new defensive position along Antietam Creek. McClellan pursued the next morning and within 48 hours initiated the Battle of Antietam, which forced Lee back across the Potomac River. This seems like a pretty expeditious sequence of events, not a delay.

Additionally, a detachment of the 9th Corps in conjunction with cavalry marched from Frederick and took the southern Catoctin pass at Jefferson before sunset.

The 6th Corps, about 12,000 men, marched from Buckeystown to the gap in the Catoctin at Jeffersonville, from the evening until at least 10 p.m. A night march beyond that point would have been risky since it was not known precisely where the Confederates were in the valley beyond.

The 1st Corps, about 10,000 men, marched to Frederick the evening of Sept. 13 to be ready for an advance on the Confederate rear-guard the following morning.

Harpers Ferry

There were two significant engagements in the Maryland campaign prior to the battle of Antietam. Both directly impacted the major battle to come. Maj. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson's captured Harpers Ferry on September 12. This is important because Jackson’s Corps, a large portion of Lee's army, was absent from the Battle of South Mountain and the start of the battle of Antietam, attending to the surrender of the Union garrison. To understand Antietam, the dates and times are almost as important as they are at Gettysburg.

The Battle of Harpers Ferry took place over 4 days. Stonewall Jackson found Maryland Heights stoutly defended but brigades led by Barksdale and Kershaw attacked strongly, with retreat of the Union troops across the Potomac the next day. On September 14, the rest of his infantry arrived and found Loudon Heights undefended. Jackson placed his artillery on these heights while his infantry confronted the Union army on Maryland Heights. An attack on the Union left flank was threatened by AP Hill while 50 guns began a bombardment. The Union commander realized the situation was hopeless and surrendered.

Colonel Dixon Miles was the union commander at Harpers Ferry. At age 58 he was the oldest active colonel in the Union army; a West Point graduate, he led a division at First Manassas but was held in reserve on account that he was drunk. A court of inquiry confirmed this, but he was given command of Harpers Ferry instead of a court martial. Maj Gen John Wool gave miles orders on September 5: "you will not abandon Harpers Ferry without defending it to the last extremity." Wool sent another saying "there must be no abandoning of a post, and shoot the first man that thinks of it". The Union leadership appreciated the likelihood that the town would be attacked. Why they sent no more men to defend it isn’t clear, Why Miles kept his men in the town and not positioned on the heights isn’t comprehensible. Miles was mortally wounded in the artillery barrage.

AP Hill was with Jackson at Harpers Ferry following his feud and threatened duel with General Longstreet after newspaper articles concerning the Battle of Glendale, Hill was transferred to Jackson’s command. He had performed magnificently at Second Manassas. But he clashed with Jackson during the march in Maryland, who had Hill arrested and charged him with eight counts of dereliction of duty after the campaign. For this reason, Jackson left him behind when Harper’s Ferry was captured to process the POWs.

The delay in taking Harpers Ferry had direct consequences on the Battle of Antietam. Jackson has been criticized for taking so long. It’s hard to see how things could have been done any faster. Had Miles positioned his troops with more thought, it would have taken even longer. Had Lee considered this in his placement of the troops around the town? Its not clear, but its is noteworthy that Lee didn’t try to take Harpers Ferry in the Gettysburg invasion.

The Battle of South Mountain

The implications of this delay were enormous. Recall that Special Order 191 was written September 9 but not retrieved by Union forces until September 13. Even though the intelligence was four days old, McClellan knew that Jackson was behind schedule at Harper’s Ferry, which was surrounded but not yet taken, and that Lee’s army was divided and separated over miles of Maryland countryside. Aware that a portion of Lee’s army was now vulnerable to attack, McClellan advanced toward the South Mountain range to attack Lee’s forces there.

McClellan followed Lee’s army based on the routes identified in Special Order 191. Union forces attempted to break through South Mountain to advance toward Lee's army, which would eventually concentrate near Sharpsburg. McClellan was lucky that Lee’s orders were found, that is for sure; otherwise he would have been searching for Lee all over western Maryland. But having them in his possession, he simply followed the road map Lee had drawn for him. There are 2 roads leading west from Frederick; one goes to the north gaps to Hagerstown and one goes south toward Williamsport. Lee left the southern gap exposed, likely due to limitations on manpower and supplies.

The Battle of South Mountain took place on September 14, 1862. It is very important to re-emphasize, see the timeline in the answer 2 days ago, that the lost orders were given to McClellan on September 13 and a battle occurred the very next day. Lee was surprised that the lethargic McClellan had caught up with him so rapidly. Jackson was just wrapping up Harpers Ferry. He only had Longstreet and DH Hill to defend the passes.

Although the Confederate troops ultimately had to retreat, they put up a strong resistance and delayed the Union's progress, giving Lee valuable time to reposition his forces. While Union forces were able to gain control of the mountain, they could not stop Lee from regrouping.  Confederate defenses delayed McClellan's advance enough for Lee to concentrate the remainder of his army at Sharpsburg, setting the stage for the Battle of Antietam three days later.

During the Battle of South Mountain, engagements took place at various passes and gaps within the South Mountain range. The Union forces, commanded by General George B. McClellan, aimed to seize control of the mountain passes and break through the Confederate defensive positions. In the battle, Union army attacked at 3 gaps.

The passes and gaps of South Mountain, particularly Turner's Gap, Fox's Gap, and Crampton's Gap, offered natural defensive positions. Lee was using South Mountain as a screen, but McClellan had pursued faster than was anticipated. With Jackson at Harpers Ferry, Lee fell back along the roads that led mainly to the northern gaps. Lee ordered Longstreet to be in this location to delay the Union advance.

DH Hill was at the northernmost pass with Longstreet because he had been the rear guard and naturally came to these 2 passes. A single 5,000-man Confederate division under D.H. Hill protected Fox’s and Turner’s Gaps at South Mountain. Early on September 14, Union Gen. Jacob D. Cox’s Kanawha Division of the Union IX Corps launched an attack against Samuel Garland’s brigade at Fox’s Gap. Cox’s 3,000 Ohioans overran Garland’s North Carolinians, driving the Southerners from behind a stonewall and mortally wounding Garland. However, by nightfall, Confederate soldiers still held the western edge of Fox’s gap.

At Turner’s Gap, Union Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s I Corps arrived on the steep mountainside near Frostown, and divisions under George G. Meade and John P. Hatch made relentless charges on the gap’s northern edge. After a brutal firefight along a cornfield fence, Hatch broke through the Rebel line. Only the timely arrival of reinforcements from Longstreet prevented the Confederate line from collapsing. By nightfall, the Confederates still maintained control of Turner’s Gap.

1. Turner's Gap: This was the northernmost and most heavily defended pass. Confederate forces, under the command of General D.H. Hill, held strong defensive positions on the slopes of Turner's Gap, while Union troops, led by General Joseph Hooker, made determined efforts to dislodge them.

2. Fox's Gap: Located south of Turner's Gap, Fox's Gap saw intense fighting between Confederate forces commanded by General Samuel Garland and Union troops led by General Jesse Reno. The Union forces eventually managed to seize control of this pass.

3. Crampton's Gap: Situated south of Fox's Gap, Crampton's Gap was the southernmost pass where significant fighting occurred. Union troops, led by General William B. Franklin, engaged Confederate defenders commanded by General Howell Cobb. The Union forces successfully captured Crampton's Gap, further pressuring the Confederate positions.

Crampton’s Gap.  Civil War enthusiasts typically overlook the Battle of Crampton’s Gap as merely a prelude, but in fact, Antietam happened precisely because of this battle. It was the key to the entire campaign.

McClellan ordered Maj. Gen. William Franklin and his VI Corps to set out for Burkittsville from his camp at Buckeystown 9/14 at daybreak, with instructions to drive through Crampton's Gap and attack McLaws' rear. Although he sent the order immediately, by allowing Franklin to wait until morning to depart, his order resulted in a delay of nearly 11 hours. When the Federals reached Burkittsville around noon, the Confederate artillery opened up. In Burkittsville, while under artillery fire, Franklin assembled his troops into three columns. At 3 p.m., after a delay of nearly 3 hours, the VI Corps finally began its assault. The reason for the delay has never been ascertained, but it would prove costly.

The Confederate force consisted of one battery of artillery, three regiments of infantry under Brig. Gen. William Mahone, one brigade under Brig. Gen. Howell Cobb, and a small cavalry detachment under Col. Thomas T. Munford. After the report of a very large number of camp fires indicating a much larger Union force than anticipated, General Lee recognized the threat this posed to his split forces, so the order was sent down to General Cobb to ..."hold the gap if it cost the life of every man in my command".

Only about one thousand Confederates defended Crampton's Gap, the southernmost of the South Mountain passes. At around 4:00 p.m., Maj. Gen. Henry Slocum's division charged into the gap and dislodged the Confederates from the protection of a stone fence. The arrival of four regiments under Gen. Howell Cobb did little to stem the Union tide. Reinforced by a brigade of Vermonters, the Federals made a second attack and drove the remaining Confederates down the western slope of South Mountain, leaving the VI Corps in possession of Crampton's.

The Union attack broke the makeshift Rebel line but only at 6 pm, too late for a follow up attack. This gave Lee a chance to salvage his force.

Even though the Confederates still held onto Fox’s and Tuner’s Gaps, Lee ordered his outnumbered forces to withdraw from South Mountain. By sunrise on September 15, the Confederates had completely withdrawn. Once the gap is in Union hands, a road connects it to all of the roads behind the mountain, and so Hill and Longstreet can be surrounded. Longstreet and Hill had to retreat that evening.

Once Crampton’s Gap was taken, even though Turner’s and the Confederates held Fox’s Gap at the end of the day they were not defensible any longer. Consequently, Lee retreated.

Aftermath

The Battle of Antietam took place on September 17, 1862, 3 days after the Battle of South Mountain. More Americans died in battle on that day than in any other day in our nation’s history. The battle was a clear Union victory. The consequences were enormous. Great Britain would never become officially involved in the war or recognize the Confederacy. The Republicans won the mid=term elections. Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation in the shadow of victory.

Although McClellan defeated Lee, ending the invasion, he did not pursue the ANV despite Lincoln’s persistent entreaties and orders. McClellan was relieved of duty that October, with Ambrose Burnside taking command. McClellan would run against Lincoln for president in 1864.

What do you think of the Maryland Campaign of 1862? Let us know below.

Now, if you missed it, read Lloyd’s piece on how the Confederacy funded its war effort here.

The Second Battle of Fort Wagner and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment

The 160th anniversary of the Second Battle of Fort Wagner, in the US Civil War took place in July. As we look back, we remember the men who fought and died on Morris Island in South Carolina in this American Civil War engagement in July of 1863. Michael Thomas Leibrandt explains.

The Old Flag Never Touched the Ground by Rick Reeves. For the state of Massachusetts, 1863

Leading the Union attack was the 54th Massachusetts Regiment of Foot, one of the first African American regiments in the United States army; immortalized in a statue still seen today in Boston Common, and in Robert Lowell’s Centennial poem. The 54th was also the subject of the 1989 film “Glory” featuring Denzel Washington, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Broderick.

The story and legacy of the 54th Massachusetts is one of the most enduring of any Union regiment from the Civil War. Here is why:

The Emancipation Proclamation authorized the formation of the 54th. Its formation was supported by famous Americans such at Frederick Douglass when its recruitment began in February of 1863. One of the men who was appointed to recruit was George Stephens, a military correspondent who assisted with the recruitment of men in Philadelphia and then joined the 54th Massachusetts as the rank of Sergeant.

The 54th was led by a member of a prominent Boston family. Chosen to lead the regiment was twenty-five year old Colonel Robert Gould Shaw.

After studying overseas in Europe, Shaw attended Harvard from 1856–1859. He was married in 1863 and was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in Company H of the 2nd Massachusetts Regiment. He served at the Battle of Antietam among other engagements. In early 1863, Captain Shaw’s father traveled to Virginia with the commission for his son to lead the 54th. The Captain was initially reluctant to take the commission, as he did not wish to leave his regiment.

The attack

The 54th Massachusetts led the Union advance on Fort Wagner. Constructed by the Confederacy in the summer of 1862 and named after Lt. Colonel Thomas M. Wagner, the fort was built to protect the southern end of Charleston Harbor. Fort Wagner was armed by fourteen cannons. Among them was a 10-Inch (250 mm) Columbiad, three 32 lb. Smooth-Bore Breech-Loading Cannons, a 42 lb. Corronade, a 10-inch Coast Mortar, and four 12-Pound Howitzers. Wagner was also protected by land mines buried in the sand dunes, a moat, and rows of abatis.

At 7:45 P.M., the 54th Massachusetts emerged and advanced up the beach. By the time that the 54th reached the parapet of Fort Wagner, they had devastating casualties. Among the 272 men lost from the regiment was Colonel Shaw, whose sword was stolen from his body immediately after the battle.

Wagner was never taken by Union forces until it was abandoned in late 1863. Today, much of the original defenses of Fort Wagner are under sea level. Periodically, a hurricane hits Charleston Harbor and unearths some Civil War artifacts or ordinance that sends the odd tourist running for cover. For years, inaccessibility to the island has kept the galant legend of the 54th Massachusetts buried under the sand.

The bravery of the 54th Massachusetts, however lives on today. In 2017, after being thought to be lost several times, Col. Shaw’s sword was discovered in a Boston attic. In 2008, the 54th was reactivated as part of the Massachusetts Army National Guard Ceremonial Unit and participated in President Obama’s 2008 Inauguration. The new unit is called the 54th Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment and provides military honors at funerals.

Many famed Union regiments have been chronicled in the Civil War. Few, however have storied histories that still attract interest today and no doubt will in the future like the 54th Massachusetts.

The descendants of Colonel Robert Gould Shaw donated his sword to the Massachusetts Historical Society for all to enjoy. The Confederacy buried Shaw’s body in a mass grave with his soldiers. After the war, the United States Army requested that Shaw’s body be exhumed and returned to his family. Colonel Shaw’s father would not allow it, saying “We can imagine no holier place than that in which he lies,” he wrote, “among his brave and devoted soldiers, nor wish for him better company-what a body-guard he has.”

Adding to the honor, legend, and glory of the 54th Massachusetts.

What do you think of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment? Let us know below.

Michael Thomas Leibrandt lives and works in Abington, PA

The Role of Baseball in the US Civil War

Baseball was a sport started in the mid-19th century in New York City. That led to it being a sport played at the time of the US Civil War. Here, Richard Bluttal looks at the impact of baseball during the war.

The New York Knickerbockers baseball team in 1858 (on the left in the picture).

Rather than the pastoral Cooperstown, modern baseball was born in America’s largest metropolis: New York City. By the 1840s, the first known consolidated rule set was created by the Manhattan-based New York Knickerbockers led by Alexander Cartwright. The Knickerbockers were well organized and promoted formalized rules for their game, emulating the more prestigious cricket clubs common in New York City at the time. Other teams in Manhattan and Brooklyn quickly emerged and sought to copy the Knickerbocker’s success.

As the Civil War began, the baseball clubs of New York became enthusiastic supporters of the Union war effort. The New York Clipper, an entertainment journal that covered the NABBP, celebrated players who enlisted and urged others to follow their example: “better join in boys, than be loafing the streets or hanging around bar-rooms, and thus show the people you have some noble traits that atone for whatever bad ones you get credit for.” The rules of baseball in 1860 as adopted by players and organizations are not too different from the modern version of the game. There are four bases spaced evenly apart with one of those being home plate, three strikes and you’re out, three outs in an inning, and nine innings for a standard game. One of the major differences in the rules of baseball in the 19th century is that the batter, after hitting the ball, can only be called “out” if he is hit by the ball. The President learned and loved the game prior to his election campaign in 1860. A popular newspaper even published a political cartoon showing him batting against his opponents in his campaign. During the Civil war he even had a baseball field constructed on the White House lawn. There are stories such as he was late for a war council meeting and said,” They will just have to wait. It is almost my turn at bat”.

Organized game

The first organized baseball game of the war took place on July 2, 1861, when a team from the 71st New York Regiment defeated the Washington Nationals amateur club, 41 to 13, in a park across from the White House. Later that month, the regiment suffered heavy casualties at the First Battle of Bull Run, losing many of its best athletes. The teams arranged a rematch in early 1862 where the Nationals defeated the decimated New Yorkers 28 to 13.

Organized events like this helped to popularize the game among Union soldiers. Colonel Mason Whiting Tyler explained that by 1863 baseball was “all the rage now in the Army of the Potomac…[the camps are] alive with ball players, almost every street having its game.” John G.B. Adams of the 19th Massachusetts Regiment reported that “base ball fever [had] broke[n] out” as different regiments played against one another usually favoring the New York game.

In most cases, Civil War baseball was played in the relative safety of military encampments. However, battles often disrupted these games. George Putnam, a Union soldier stationed in Texas in 1863, described one such incident. He wrote that a game had to be “called-early” after a surprise attack by Confederate infantry: Despite these dangers, baseball usually provided a welcome distraction from the carnage of the battlefield. On April 3, 1862, Frederick Fairfax of the Fifth Ohio Infantry wrote home from Virginia describing the specter of violence that haunted these games:

“It is astonishing how indifferent a person can become to danger. The report of musketry is heard but a very little distance from us…yet over there on the other side of the road is most of the company, playing [baseball] and perhaps in less than half an hour they may be called to play a ball game of a more serious nature.”

Moments of leisure

For soldiers, these games were rare moments of leisure from the anxiety and rigorous lifestyle typical during the Civil War. As John G.B. Adams put it, playing baseball “was a grand time, and all [participants] agreed that it was nicer to play base [ball] than minie [bullet] ball.” Consequently, officers often used baseball for official purposes, encouraging soldiers to play as relief from the monotony of military camp life and to complement training activities. They also hoped to use these games to foster camaraderie and teamwork among men who would soon be required to fight together in the battlefield.

The Civil War exposed many soldiers from all southern states to New York baseball for the first time and, over the course of the war, helped to popularize the game. Unfortunately, relatively little documentation exists regarding Confederate baseball. Judging from soldiers’ letters and diaries, many southerners’ initial exposure to baseball came largely in the form of watching Union men play the New York game in prisoner of war camps. Within Confederate POW camps, Union prisoners often used baseball to pass the time, with the most prominent site of play occurring at Salisbury Prison in North Carolina. Charles Carroll Gray, a Union physician held at Salisbury during the summer of 1862, reported in his diary that POWs celebrated July 4th “with music, reading of the Declaration of Independence, and sack and foot races in the afternoon, and also a baseball game.”

The Civil War started and ended in April, the traditional beginning of the now baseball season. The soldiers on both sides went home and brought baseball with them. The game exploded in communities all over the country. They were often referred to as the Textile Leagues.

What do you think of the role of baseball in the US Civil War? Let us know below.

Now read Richard’s series of articles on trauma and medicine during war, starting with the American Revolution here.

After the US Civil War: A History of the Reconstruction Era

Between the years 1865-1868, the United States confronted one of the greatest political crises in its history, the battle between President Andrew Johnson and Congress over Reconstruction. The crisis arose from the intersection of three developments: (i) Militancy of the former slaves in demanding substantive freedom, (ii) White southern reluctance to accept the reality of emancipation, and (iii) Johnson’s intransigence in the face of growing northern concern over a series of momentous events in the South.

There is one particularly important historical event occurring at the beginning of the war that had a tremendous effect on reconstruction.

Richard Bluttall explains.

Andrew John in 1860.

Contraband

Newly arrived at Fortress Monroe, on May 23, 1861, General Benjamin Butler was confronted by the arrival of three fugitive slaves from the Confederate defensive works project across Hampton Roads. Faced with the looming prospect of being shipped to North Carolina to work on fortifications, Goodheart writes “the three slaves decided to leave the Confederacy and try their luck, just across the water, with the Union.” They were not the first slaves to seek sanctuary in a Union military post. Soon after Lincoln’s inauguration in early March, slaves in separate incidents had presented themselves at Fort Sumter in Charleston Harbor and Fort Pickens near Pensacola, Florida. Consistent with the Fugitive Slave Act, the slaves in both instances had been rebuffed and turned over to local authorities. In this atmosphere of uncertainty, Benjamin Butler had to decide what action to take. His hand was forced by the arrival of a Confederate officer at Fortress Monroe under flag of truce demanding the slaves return.

Adam Goodheart relates the encounter between Butler and the Virginian, Major John Baytop Cary on the three slaves.

Cary got down to business. “I am informed,” he said, “that three Negroes belonging to Colonel Mallory have escaped within your lines. I am Colonel Mallory’s agent and have charge of his property. What do you mean to do with those Negroes?”

“I intend to hold them,” Butler said.
“Do you mean, then, to set aside your constitutional obligation to return them?”

Even the dour Butler must have found it hard to suppress a smile. This was, of course, a question he had expected. And he had prepared what he thought was a fairly clever answer.

“I mean to take Virginia at her word,” he said. “I am under no constitutional obligations to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be.”

“But you say we cannot secede,” Cary retorted, “and so you cannot consistently detain the Negroes.”

“But you say you have seceded,” Butler said, “so you cannot consistently claim them. I shall hold these Negroes as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property.”  Officers on the ground like Butler quickly realized the slaves were a significant military asset to the Confederacy, acting not only as laborers, teamsters, and in other support roles for the army, but also by keeping southern agriculture functioning allowing a much larger portion of the white male population to be available for military service than might otherwise have been the case. Hence, as property being used in support of a rebellion against the government, Butler’s “contraband of war” formulation legally justified the seizure of the slaves without immediately undermining their status as property. The Lincoln administration quickly acquiesced to Butler’s policy and Congress gave it the force of law in early August through the Confiscation Act of 1861.

Within a little more than a year, the stream of a few hundred contrabands at Fort Monroe became a river of tens — probably even hundreds — of thousands. They “flocked in vast numbers — an army in themselves — to the camps of the Yankees,” a Union chaplain wrote. “The arrival among us of these hordes was like the oncoming of cities.”

This was such an important situation because it resulted in the creation of a separate organization to handle the refugee crisis.  A whole new system had to be developed to address slaves crossing Union lines throughout the war effort in many parts of the country leading to the development of refugee camps.

History of Secession

Many people, especially those wishing to support the South’s right to secede in 1860–61, have said that when 13 American colonies rebelled against Great Britain in 1776, it was an act of secession. Others say the two situations were different and the colonies’ revolt was a revolution. The war resulting from that colonial revolt is known as the American Revolution or the American War for Independence.  As to Lincoln’s belief on this issue see below:

First Inaugural Address March 4, 1861

I hold that, in contemplation of universal law, and of the Constitution, the union of these States is perpetual....It follows....that no State, upon its own mere motion, can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to that effect are legally void; and that acts of violence, within any State or States, against the authority of the United States, are insurrectionary or revolutionary, according to circumstances. I, therefore, consider that, in view of the Constitution and the laws, the Union is unbroken. We find the proposition that, in legal contemplation, the Union is perpetual confirmed by the history of the Union itself. The Union is much older than the Constitution. It was formed, in fact, by the Articles of Association in 1774. It was matured and continued by the Declaration of Independence in 1776. It was further matured, and the faith of all the thirteen States expressly plighted and engaged that it should be perpetual, by the Articles of Confederation in 1778. And, finally, in 1787, one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the Constitution was "to form a more perfect Union."

Message to Congress in Special Session July 4, 1861

The States have their status in the Union, and they have no other legal status. If they break from this, they can only do so against the law and by revolution.

Effect of the Civil War on the South

The losses were so great that the numbers ceased to register. In what Walt Whitman called “the desolated, ruined South . . . nearly the whole generation of young men between seventeen and thirty” had been “destroyed or maimed; the rich impoverished; the plantations covered with weeds; the slaves unloosed and become the masters; and the name of Southerner blackened with every shame.” Emancipation alone had wiped between $ 1.6 and $ 2.7 billion of capital investment off the books. Per capita income in the South collapsed by more than 40 percent, and real estate fell in value, ranging from an 18 percent loss in Tennessee to a whopping 70 percent devaluation in Louisiana. A third of Southern livestock and half of the South’s farm machinery had disappeared, and with them, the agriculture that depended on them, as land under cultivation shrank by 34 percent in South Carolina and 30 percent in Louisiana. Banking capital, much of it invested in Confederate securities, suffered losses of 28 percent, sending interest rates on what remained for borrowing through the few intact roofs. Total direct and indirect costs of the war for the South were probably close to $ 13.6 billion— which does not even begin to convey the sense of demoralization that accompanied the losses. “The whole country is alive with robbers,” shivered one Tennessee woman. “Every night we hear of a new robbery and sometimes murder.” Keep in mind the question, what would it take to resurrect the South economically?

The slave community was the seedbed for the ways African Americans responded to the coming of emancipation and shouldering the responsibilities of freedom during Reconstruction. After the war thousands of freedmen and women seeking to locate family members from whom they had been separated while in slavery would place advertisements in newspapers and solicit aid from the Freedman’s Bureau. Many families divided under slavery because their members belonged to different owners, now lived together.  Remember the experience of working under their own direction and of marketing produce they had grown as slaves helped to prepare African Americans for involvement in the market economy during Reconstruction. Many affirmed their newly acquired freedom by physical movement, separating themselves from former owners, if only by a few miles, “If I stay here,” one freedwoman told her ex-owner, “I’ll never know I am free.” Thousands of blacks converged on southern towners and cities. Schools, churches, fraternal societies, offices of the Freedman’s Bureau, and federal army outposts were built in cities.  There was a broader theme- a desire for independence from white control, for autonomy as individuals. Some married women established bank accounts in their own names at the Freedman’s Savings Bank.

Remember freedom meant more than establishing autonomous institutions. Recognition of their equal rights as American citizens quickly emerged as the animating impulse of black politics. In a society that had made political participation a core element of freedom, the right to vote inevitably became central to the former slave’s desire autonomy and empowerment.  “Slavery,” said Frederick Douglas in 1865, “is not abolished until the black man has the ballot.”

“We simply ask, “declared the South Carolina Colored People’s Convention of 1865 in a petition to Congress, “ that was shall be recognized as men; that there be no obstructions placed in our way, that the same laws that govern white men shall govern black men; that we have the right of trial by jury of our peers;…. That in short, we be dealt with as others are- in equality and justice.”

Freed people remained adamant in the desire to work without the supervision of masters and overseers, to determine their own hours and pace of labor, and to receive wages commensurate with their effort. Genuine economic freedom could be obtained only through ownership of land, for without land, blacks’ labor would continue to be exploited by their former owners.  The response, summed up by a Kentucky newspaper: the former slaves was “free, but free only to labor.” What the freedman wanted most, said Martin Delany, the black abolitionist, “is a home-one that he can call his own, and possess in fee simple.”

What was the definition of freedom for slaves?

• Many affirmed their newly acquired freedom by physical movement, separating themselves from their former slave owners, if only by a few miles.

• Some former slaves jettisoned the surnames of their masters.

• A desire for independence from white control, for autonomy as individuals and as newly created communities. They want to work without supervision of masters and overseers. The ownership of land, without land, black’s labor would continue to be exploited by their former owners.

• Reunite relatives separated by slavery and to consolidate long-existing family relationships.

• Access to education.

• The right to vote.

In South Carolina, Louisiana, and other areas occupied earliest by the Union soldiers, federal authorities found themselves presiding over the transition from slavery to freedom.

The world of most rural slaves was bound by their local communities and kin. They became extremely familiar with the local landscape, crops, and population, and gathered with slaves from nearby farms and plantations to celebrate marriages, attend funerals and for Christmas and Fourth of July celebrations.

The slave family was central to the African American community, allowing for the transmission of values, traditions, and survival strategies. When freedom came for slaves, legalizing their marriages and consolidating their families were among their highest priorities.

Slaves developed a distinctive version of Christianity that would play a crucial role in the Reconstruction era and, indeed, down to the present time. Before the Civil War, urban free blacks established their own churches. These institutions, at which many slaves as well as free blacks worshiped, became training grounds for postwar black leadership and schools, in a sense, of self-government. The black churches were the center of community life. These churches housed schools, social events, and political gatherings, adjudicated family disputes. The church also became a breeding ground for black leadership, and many ministers entered politics.  At least 240 black ministers, held some public office during Reconstruction.

Central to the meaning of freedom was access to education, so long denied to most African Americans. There was a recognition that learning was a form of empowerment, a desire to read the Bible, a general thrust toward uplift and group advancement. Northern abolitionists had been dispatching teachers as “missionaries” to runaways and contrabands since the first such contrabands had shown up at Fort Monroe in 1861.

The most difficult task confronting many Southerners at the end of the Civil War and beginning of Reconstruction was devising a new system of labor to replace the shattered world of slavery. Planters found it hard to adjust to the end of slavery.  Many former slaves believed that their years of unrequited labor gave them a claim to land. “Forty acres and a mule” became their rallying cry.  Most rented land or worked for wages on white-owned plantations.  Out of the conflicts of the plantations, new systems of labor emerged to take the place of slavery. Sharecropping dominated the cotton and tobacco South, while wage labor was the rule on sugar plantations. As under slavery, most rural blacks worked on land owned by whites. But they now exercised control over their personal lives, could come and go as they pleased, and determined which members of the family worked in the fields. Some urban growth occurred during Reconstruction, both in cities like Richmond and small market centers scattered across the cotton belt. Cities offered more diverse work opportunities for both black and white laborers.

Let’s remember the problem: Were they now supposed to sign contracts and be paid for their labor? Who would guarantee that the contracts would not turn out to be simply a newer version of bondage? Should provision be made by the public purse to educate them? Should they be considered citizens, and entitled to all the “privileges and immunities? Guaranted to citizens by Article 4, section 2, of the Constitution? And what were those “privileges and immunities” anyway? Office holding, jury service, bearing witness in court, voting, election to office?  And what would happen on representation in the House of Representatives, a complete change. The so-called three-fifths rule in the Constitution would disappear and going forward every freed slave would be counted as a full person- yet without any right to vote.

The Emancipation-Proclamation is perhaps the most misunderstood important document in American History.  The proclamation applied almost exclusively to areas under Confederate control. Thus, it had no bearing on the nearly half a million slaves in the board slave states that had never seceded from the Union, or on more than three hundred thousand slaves in the areas of the Confederacy occupied by Union soldiers and exempted by Lincoln from its coverage- the entire states of Tennessee and parts of Virginia and Louisiana. On January 1, 1863, most slaves resided in places where the proclamation could not be enforced.

A New Birth of Freedom- Reconstruction During the Civil War, The Emancipation Proclamation launched the historical process of Reconstruction.

At the war’s outset, the Lincoln Administration insisted that restoring the Union was its only purpose. But as slaves by the thousands abandoned the plantation and headed for the Union lines, and military victory eluded the North, the president made the destruction of slavery his war aim announced in the Emancipation Proclamation. During the war “rehearsals for Reconstruction “took place in the Union-occupied South. On the South Carolina Sea Island, the former slaves demanded land of their own, while government officials and Northern investors urged them to return to work on the plantations. In addition, a group of young Northern reformers came to the islands to educate the freed people and assist in the transition from slavery to freedom.  As the Union army occupied Southern territory, slaves by the thousands abandoned the plantations. The move towards emancipation might alienate the border states or make it more difficult to persuade the Confederate States to rejoin the Union. Just five months after the war had begun, the Union Commander of the Western Department, Major General John C. Frémont, declared martial law in Missouri. The enthusiastic Frémont confiscated property belonging to owners from the Confederacy and announced that the slaves present in Missouri were to be freed. Lincoln intervened, canceling these emancipations and noting that “I think there is great danger that . . . the liberating slaves of traitorous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us.” When Major General Frémont objected, he was removed from command. When in May 1862 another Union commander, Major General David Hunter, announced the emancipation of freed slaves in South Carolina and Georgia, Lincoln intervened once again and canceled these emancipations too. It wasn’t until June 1862 that Lincoln finally signed legislation that formally outlawed slavery in all U.S. territories though this was not immediately enforced.

Lincoln still had to be very careful. The phrasing of the proclamation meant that slaves in states which were part of the Confederacy would be deemed to be free only if their states were invaded by the north or if they escaped to the north. However, the status of slaves in states which were part of the Union such as Maryland and Kentucky were unchanged. African American slaves in the southern states saw this proclamation as a promise of freedom if they could escape from the south and enter the northern states. Over the next three years, more than half a million slaves made their way north to freedom. This not only deprived the Confederacy of essential workers, but it also provided a vital source of new troops for the Union. Almost 200,000 African Americans, many former slaves, joined the armies of the north and fought bravely during the remainder of the Civil War.

Lincoln and the 13th Amendment

Lincoln defeated Democratic candidate George McClellan and secured his second presidential bid, Congress continued to debate the passage of the 13th amendment.  This time, however, the President positioned himself at the center of the controversy.

 Lincoln argued that emancipation would so undermine the morale of the Confederacy that it would weaken their military and bring about a swift end to the war.  The President undertook his own campaign for passage of the amendment, and his political allies and cabinet members helped to further the cause, convincing constituents and state legislatures to appeal directly to their congressmen for passage of the amendment. The proposal had passed quickly through the Senate the previous spring, but in the House of Representatives debates created divisive partisan factions, with little certainty as to the fate of the proposal.  Finally, after months of conflict, on January 31, 1865, the amendment passed 119-56, a two-vote margin.  In December, it was formally adopted.

The ratification of 13th amendment conferred upon Congress the power to enforce the abolition of slavery by appropriate legislation, granting the federal government the constitutional authority to dictate power relationships among individual citizens as it never had before.

 As the text reads:

Section 1. Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.

Section 2. Congress shall have power to enforce this article with appropriate legislation.

Less than a year after ratification, Congress called upon the enforcement power from Section 2 to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1866, granting African Americans citizenship and equal protection.  Proponents of the law argued that the 13th amendment authorized the federal government to legislate state action; critics maintained that unequal treatment was distinct from slavery such that the 1866 Act was beyond the amendment’s reach. This act represented the first attempt to give concrete meaning to the 13th Amendment. This Act declared all persons born in the United States (except Indians) national citizens and went on to spell out the rights they were to enjoy equally without regard to race.  No longer could states enact laws such as the Black Codes (noted below) declaring actions crimes for black persons but not white.

 In response to these debates, and as a direct outgrowth of the enforcement clause, Congress went on to pass the 14th and 15th amendments in quick succession, defining citizenship and equal rights and banning voting restrictions based on race.

 The 14th amendment would become the Supreme Court’s principal tool in deciding civil rights cases through the 20th century.  Still the 13th amendment, while less applicable to subsequent controversies than its counterpart, served to fundamentally reshape the American landscape.

 And while its eventual champion may have begun as little more than a symbolic emancipator, Lincoln’s 1865 campaign for ratification served to launch perhaps the greatest legal, economic and social revolution the United States has ever seen.

Response to Lincoln’s Plans

Two congressional factions formed over the subject of Reconstruction. A majority group of moderate Republicans in Congress supported Lincoln’s position that the Confederate states should be reintegrated as quickly as possible. A minority group of Radical Republicans--led by Thaddeus Stevens in the House and Ben Wade and Charles Sumner in the Senate--sharply rejected Lincoln’s plan, claiming it would result in restoration of the southern aristocracy and re-enslavement of blacks. They wanted to effect sweeping changes in the south and grant the freed slave’s full citizenship before the states were restored. The influential group of Radicals also felt that Congress, not the president, should direct Reconstruction. This is what led to the Wade-Davis Bill in July 1864.

The Radical Republicans voiced immediate opposition to Lincoln’s reconstruction plan, objecting to its leniency and lack of protections for freed slaves. Congress refused to accept the rehabilitation of Tennessee, Arkansas, and Louisiana. In July 1864, Congress passed the Wade-Davis Bill, their own formula for restoring the Union.

• A state must have a majority within its borders take the oath of loyalty.

• A state must formally abolish slavery.

• No Confederate officials could participate in the new governments.

Lincoln did not approve of this plan and exercised his pocket veto. An angry Congress would later pass the Wade-Davis Manifesto (August 1864), which charged Lincoln with usurping the powers of Congress. This statement would have little impact on the public, as the military news from the South improved; Sherman’s Atlanta Campaign restored Lincoln’s popularity and helped assure his reelection.

President Johnson and his Reconstruction Plan

With the Assassination of Lincoln, the Presidency fell upon an old-fashioned southern Jacksonian Democrat of pronounced states’ rights views. Although an honest and honorable man, Andrew Johnson was one of the most unfortunate of Presidents. Arrayed against him were the Radical Republicans in Congress, brilliantly led and ruthless in their tactics. Johnson was no match for them.

Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, in 1808, Johnson grew up in poverty. He was apprenticed to a tailor as a boy but ran away. He opened a tailor shop in Greeneville, Tennessee, married Eliza McCardle, and participated in debates at the local academy.

Entering politics, he became an adept stump speaker, championing the common man and vilifying the plantation aristocracy. As a Member of the House of Representatives and the Senate in the 1840’s and ’50’s, he advocated a homestead bill to provide a free farm for the poor man.

During the secession crisis, Johnson remained in the Senate even when Tennessee seceded, which made him a hero in the North and a traitor in the eyes of most Southerners. In 1862 President Lincoln appointed him Military Governor of Tennessee, and Johnson used the state as a laboratory for reconstruction. In 1864 the Republicans, contending that their National Union Party was for all loyal men, nominated Johnson, a Southerner and a Democrat, for Vice President.

Views on Black Population

What were Johnson’s views regarding blacks?  He held deeply racist views regarding blacks and proved unable to envision their playing any role in the South’s Reconstruction, except as a dependent laboring class returning to work.

Prior to his assuming office after Lincoln’s assassination, Johnson continued to repeat himself: the eleven states of the Confederacy had never actually been out of the Union because they did not have the right to secede. According to Johnson, since these states hadn’t seceded, they had not relinquished their right to govern themselves as they wished. He insisted that slavery provided far better conditions for black men and women than they would enjoy in Africa and certainly enjoyed better conditions than the Northern wage slave, who had to grind out a pittance in a factory. To Johnson, free blacks were much worse off than southern slaves.  By the summer of 1863, Johnson supported immediate, unconditional emancipation. His reasoning was consistent with his hatred of the aristocrat: emancipation would liberate the white man from the tyranny of the plutocrat slaveholders. He did not for a minute believe” that the negro race is equal to the Anglo-Saxon-not at all.” Blacks had no role to play in Johnson’s vision of Reconstruction. In his view Reconstruction boiled down to placing the southern states under the control of loyal whites and bringing them back to their full standing in the Union as quickly as possible. At the end of May 1865 Johnson announced his plans for Reconstruction.

Johnson’s Plan for Reconstruction

Following Lincoln’s assassination in April 1865, Andrew Johnson became president and inaugurated the period of Presidential Reconstruction (1865–67). Johnson shared the white Southerners’ attitude toward African Americans, considering black men innately inferior and unready for equal civil or political rights. On May 29, 1865, Johnson made his policy clear:

• Issued a general proclamation of pardon and amnesty for most Confederates and authorized the provisional governor of North Carolina to proceed with the reorganization of that state. Shortly afterward he issued similar proclamations for the other former Confederate states. In each case a state constitutional convention was to be chosen by the voters who pledged future loyalty to the U.S. Constitution. Johnson offered a pardon to all Southern whites except Confederate leaders and wealthy planters (although most of these subsequently received individual pardons), restoring their political rights and all property except slaves. Petitions for pardons came in by the hundreds and were given the presidential signature by the hundreds. By 1867 Johnson would issue 13,500 pardons.

• He also outlined how new state governments would be created. Apart from the requirement that they abolish slavery, repudiate secession, and abrogate the Confederate debt, these governments were granted a free hand in managing their affairs. They responded by enacting the black codes, ( note the Black Code folder ) laws that required African Americans to sign yearly labor contracts and in other ways sought to limit the freedmen’s economic options and reestablish plantation discipline. Note the observation of journalist Sidney Andrews on the black codes: “the whites seem wholly unable to comprehend that freedom for the negro means the same think as freedom for them. They readily enough admit that the Government has made him free but appear to believe that they have the right to exercise the old control.” All told, Johnson’s self-reconstructed states chose for senators and representatives six Confederate cabinet officers and four generals. Back to the Black Codes, it defined as “vagrants” or “paupers” any freedperson who appeared unemployed and allowed local officials to bid them out as laborers for up to a year.  The first Black Code was enacted in Mississippi in an ironically titled piece of legislation: An Act to confer Civil Rights on Freedmen. This act required all African American men to present an annual labor contact in January each year. Failure to do so would result in classification as a vagrant and arrest. Workers who reneged on their annual contracts were treated as runaways who could be classed as vagrants. Even whites who associated with or assisted African Americans could find themselves arrested for vagrancy. The Mississippi code was quickly amended to include a clause which noted that “all white persons so assembling themselves with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, or usually associating with freedmen, free negroes or mulattoes, on terms of equality, shall be deemed vagrants.” The Black Code enacted in Mississippi became the model for others that followed, and South Carolina, Alabama, and Louisiana all introduced their own Black Codes in late 1865. In early 1866, Florida, Virginia, Georgia, North Carolina, Texas, Tennessee, and Arkansas all followed the leads of these states. Thomas W. Conway, the commissioner for the Freedmen’s Bureau in Louisiana noted in 1866, “These codes were simply the old black code of the state, with the word ‘slave’ expunged, and ‘Negro’ substituted. The most odious features of slavery were preserved in them.”

• Johnson vetoed both the Freedman’s Bureau and the Civil Rights bills. He insisted that Congress pass no Reconstruction legislation until the Southern states were fully represented. Although the Senate failed by a single vote to override the Freedman’s Bureau bill (another measure, enacted in July 1867 extended the bureau’s life to 1870). Congress mustered the two-thirds majority to pass the Civil Rights Act.

Johnson assumed that ordinary white yeoman would replace in office the planters who had led the South in secession. He also ordered nearly all the land in the hands of the army and the Freedman’s Bureau returned to its prewar owners, an action that solidified his support among the South’s power class.

Despite the abolition of slavery, many former Confederates were not willing to accept the social changes. The fears of the mostly conservative planter elite and other prominent white citizens, however, were partly assuaged by Johnson’s assurance that wholesale land redistribution from the planters to the freedmen would not occur. Johnson ordered that land forfeited under the Confiscation Acts of 1861 and 1862, which were passed by Congress and administered by the Freedmen’s Bureau, would not be redistributed to the freedmen, but instead returned to pardoned owners. African Americans strongly resisted the implementation of these measures, and they seriously undermined Northern support for Johnson’s policies.

Congressional Radical Reconstruction Plan

During the autumn of 1865, the Radical Republicans responded to the implementation of the Black Codes by blocking the readmission of the former rebellious states to Congress. Johnson, however, pushed to allow former Confederate states into the Union, if their state governments adopted the Thirteenth Amendment (which abolished slavery). The amendment was ratified by December 6, 1865, leading Johnson to believe that Reconstruction was over. Congress refused to seat the representatives and senators elected from the southern states, many of whom had been leading officials in the Confederate government and army.

The Radical-controlled Congress, however, rejected Johnson’s moderate presidential Reconstruction, and organized the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, a 15-member panel that devised Reconstruction requirements for the Southern states to be restored to the Union.

Congress continued to pass more radical legislation. The Radical Republican vision for Reconstruction, also called “Radical Reconstruction,” was further bolstered in the 1866 election, when more Republicans took office in Congress. During this era, Congress passed three important Reconstruction amendments. The Civil Rights Bill was passed in 1866, as noted above. No state could deprive any citizen of the right to make contracts. The Congress mustered the two-thirds majority to pass the bill over the President’s veto.

The Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery was ratified in 1865. The Fourteenth Amendment, proposed in 1866 and ratified in 1868, guaranteed U.S. citizenship to all persons born or naturalized in the United States and granted them federal civil rights. The Fifteenth Amendment, proposed in late February 1869 and passed in early February 1870, decreed that the right to vote could not be denied because of “race, color, or previous condition of servitude.” These amendments transformed the Constitution from a document concerned primarily with federal-state relations and rights of property into a vehicle through which members of vulnerable minorities could stake a claim to substantive freedom and seek protection against misconduct by all levels of government.

Congress also passed the Reconstruction Acts (1867-1868), Congress approved the acts in February 1867, and then on March 2 it overrode Johnson’s veto. Their principle task was to create an entirely new electorate in the South that carefully excluded recusant Confederates and their sympathizers among the white population and certified the enfranchisement of the freedman through the creation of vast registries of eligible voters.

The first Reconstruction Act placed 10 Confederate states under military control (dissolving the self-reconstructed governments that Johnson had set up) grouping them into five military districts that would serve as the acting government for the region. One major purpose was to recognize and protect the right of African Americans to vote. Under a system of martial law in the South, the military closely supervised local government, elections, and the administration of justice, and tried to protect office holders and freedmen from violence. Blacks were enrolled as voters and former Confederate leaders were excluded for a limited period. These Reconstruction Acts denied the right to vote for men who had sworn to uphold the Constitution and then rebelled against the federal government. As a result, in some states the black population was a minority, while the number of blacks who were registered to vote nearly matched the number of white registered voters. In addition, Congress required that each state draft a new state constitution—which would have to be approved by Congress—and that each state ratify the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and grant voting rights to black men. One of the acts arrested on the premise that lawful governments did not exist in the South, and that Congress could govern the region until acceptable ones had been established, this is the act that temporarily divided the South into five military districts and led as noted above to the ratification of the 14th Amendment.  Union Leagues spread throughout the South in 1867. The organization had originated among middle-class northerners. The local leagues met in schools and churches, planned rallies and parades, and raised funds for mutual aid societies. Local leagues organized cooperative stores, advised freedmen on contract disputes with landowners and sometimes established their own courts to deal with community disagreements.

The Overthrow of Reconstruction 1869-1877

In 1868, the Republicans unanimously chose Ulysses S. Grant to be the Republican presidential candidate. Grant won favor with the Radicals after he allowed Edwin M. Stanton, a Radical, to be reinstated as secretary of war. As early as 1862, during the Civil War, Grant had appointed the Ohio military chaplain, John Eaton, to protect and gradually incorporate refugee slaves in west Tennessee and northern Mississippi into the Union war effort and pay them for their labor. Grant also opposed President Johnson by supporting the Reconstruction Acts passed by the Radicals.

President Grant’s Reconstruction Efforts

Grant was unanimously nominated by all 650 delegates, “with swinging hats and waving handkerchiefs” and a spontaneous chorus of “The Battle Cry of Freedom,” and went on in November, 1869 to win the presidency by 300,000 votes and a 214 to 80 victory in the electoral college. 3 Even before the election, congressional reconstruction was bringing Southern states back into the Union, this time firmly under Republican control. Between June 22 and July 15, Congress readmitted seven of the ten rebel states— Florida, Georgia, Alabama, Arkansas, Louisiana, and North and South Carolina— under new constitutions. South Carolina’s constitution enfranchised any “resident of this State” who was also a “male citizen of the United States, of the age of twenty- one years and upwards . . . without distinction of race, color or former condition,” and forbade the state legislature from passing “any law that will deprive any of the citizens of this State of the right of suffrage, except for treason, murder, robbery or dueling, whereof the persons shall have been duly tried and convicted.” And there was serious discussion of appealing to the federal government for a loan of $ 1 million to be used in buying land for the freedmen. “There is but one way to make a man love his country,” argued Franklin J. Moses, an ex- Confederate who had transformed himself into a Radical Republican, “Give them lands; give them houses.”

Immediately upon inauguration in 1869, Grant bolstered Reconstruction by prodding Congress to readmit Virginia, Mississippi, and Texas into the Union, while ensuring their constitutions protected every citizen’s voting rights. Grant met with prominent black leaders for consultation, and signed a bill into law that guaranteed equal rights to both blacks and whites in Washington, D.C.

By the early 1870’s biracial democratic government, something unknow in American history, was functioning effectively in many parts of the South, and men only recently released from bondage were exercising genuine political power. The most startling aspect of the new state governments was the role played by African Americans. Of the eighty- four Republicans in the lower house of the Georgia legislature, twenty- nine were black. In Arkansas, eight were black, and the average age was thirty- seven; five were biracial, three were ministers, three were farmers, and one was a postmaster. Florida elected fifty- three members to its lower house, thirty- seven of them Republican, and of those Republicans, seventeen were African American. In North Carolina, sixteen African Americans were elected to the state House of Representatives and three to the state Senate. As a group, they impressed a New York Times correspondent as possessing “by long odds the largest share of mental calibre.” By contrast, “there is scarcely a Southern white man” sitting in the state offices “who has character enough to keep him out of the Penitentiary.

During Grant’s two terms, he strengthened Washington’s legal capabilities to directly intervene to protect citizenship rights even if the states ignored the problem. He worked with Congress to create the Department of Justice and Office of Solicitor General, led by Attorney General Amos Akerman and the first Solicitor General Benjamin Bristow. Congress passed three powerful Enforcement Acts in 1870 and 1871. These were criminal codes which protected the Freedmen’s right to vote, hold office, serve on juries, and receive equal protection of laws. Most important, they authorized the federal government to intervene when states did not act. Grant’s new Justice Department prosecuted thousands of Klansmen under the tough new laws. Grant sent federal troops to nine South Carolina counties to suppress Klan violence in 1871.

Grant also used military pressure to ensure that African Americans could maintain their new electoral status, won passage of the Fifteenth Amendment giving African Americans the right to vote, and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1875, which gave people access to public facilities regardless of race. To counter vote fraud in the Democratic stronghold of New York City, Grant sent in tens of thousands of armed, uniformed federal marshals and other election officials to regulate the 1870 and subsequent elections. Democrats across the North then mobilized to defend their base and attacked Grant’s entire set of policies. On October 21, 1876, President Grant deployed troops to protect black and white Republican voters in Petersburg, Virginia.

Election of 1876

In the months following the Election of 1876, but prior to the inauguration in March 1877, Republican and Democratic leaders secretly hammered out a compromise to resolve the election impasse and address other outstanding issues.

Under the terms of this agreement, the Democrats agreed to accept the Republican presidential electors (thus assuring that Rutherford B. Hayes would become the next president), provided the Republicans would agree to the following:

• To withdraw federal troops from their remaining positions in the South

• To enact federal legislation that would spur industrialization in the South.

• To appoint Democrats to patronage positions in the South

• To appoint a Democrat to the president’s cabinet.

Why did the Democrats so easily give up the presidency that they had probably legitimately won? In the end it was a matter of practicality. Despite months of inflammatory talk, few responsible people could contemplate going to war. A compromise was mandatory and the one achieved in 1877, if it had been honored, would have given the Democrats what they wanted. There was no guarantee that with Samuel J. Tilden as president the Democrats would have fared as well.

To the four million former slaves in the South, the Compromise of 1877 was the “Great Betrayal." Republican efforts to assure civil rights for the blacks were totally abandoned. The white population of the country was anxious to get on with making money.

Once the parties had agreed to these terms, the Electoral Commission performed its duty. The Hayes’ electors were selected, and Hayes was named president two days before the inauguration.

The policies of Rutherford B. Hayes, America's 19th president, began to heal the nation after the ravages of the Civil War. Hayes had a reputation for being upstanding, moral, and honest, despite the controversial election.  Much of Hayes's 1877 inaugural address was devoted to calming down the citizenry. He quickly announced plans for election reform and pledged his earnest desire to heal the rift between North and South. Though he had generally supported Reconstruction, which aimed to secure the rights of black citizens, Hayes came to believe that interventionist policies were breeding more hatred among southerners, preventing the nation from healing itself in the aftermath of war.

Plessy vs Ferguson 1896

The 1896 Plessy vs. Ferguson case was extremely important. It was a legal case in which the Supreme Court decided that "separate but equal" facilities satisfied the guarantees of 14th Amendment, thus giving legal sanction to "Jim Crow" segregation laws. The namesakes of the Plessy v. Ferguson case were the plaintiff Homer Adolph Plessy (1862 – 1925) and the defendant Judge John H. Ferguson (1838 - 1915) of the Criminal Court for New Orleans. In 1954, the Supreme Court justices in Brown v. the Board of Education reversed the decision made in the Plessy case by making the decision that legally sanctioned racial segregation was inherently unequal and a violation of the 14th Amendment.

Conclusion- End of Reconstruction

Reconstructed ended when national attention turned away from the integration of former slaves as equal citizens enabling white Democrats to recapture southern politics. Between 1868 and 1877, and accelerating after the Depression of 1873, national interest in Reconstruction dwindled as economic issues moved to the foreground. The biggest threat to Republican power in the South was violence and intimidation by white conservatives, staved off by the presence of federal troops in key southern cities. Reconstruction ended with the contested Presidential election of 1876, which put Republican Rutherford B. Hayes in office in exchange for the withdrawal of federal troops from the South.

What do you think of the Reconstruction era? Let us know below.

Now read Richard’s series of articles on trauma and medicine during war, starting with the American Revolution here.

The Gettysburg Campaign: Where was General Jeb Stuart?

One of the most controversial aspects of the Gettysburg Campaign was General Jeb Stuart’s absence until late in the battle. Stuart had been surprised by the Union cavalry at Brandy Station, and his ego was hurt by the criticism he received in the southern newspapers. Through early June, he had done a magnificent job screening Lee’s movement to the northwest. Stuart hankered to circumnavigate the Union army once again. Nevertheless, Lee gave Stuart orders on June 22, which have been controversial ever since. Lloyd W Klein explains.

J. E. B. (Jeb) Stuart.

The absence of Stuart's cavalry during critical stages of the Gettysburg Campaign contributed to a lack of crucial intelligence for Lee and resulted in a crucial communication gap.  Stuart's absence during the early stages of the Battle of Gettysburg left Lee without cavalry reconnaissance and intelligence, depriving him of valuable information about the Union Army's strength, positions, and intentions. This lack of intelligence significantly impacted Lee's decision-making process and contributed to the uncertainties he faced in the initial phases of the battle. It is frequently speculated that had Stuart been present to screen the front of Lee’s army, Lee wouldn’t have been surprised by the proximity of the Union army and the Battle of Gettysburg would have been much different.

The Early Stages of the Campaign

In the early phase of the campaign, Stuart brilliantly screened Union cavalry from determining the location and strength of Lee’s army and hence its direction and ultimate destination in several battles:
Battle of Brandy Station (June 9, 1863): This was the largest cavalry battle of the Civil War and took place near Brandy Station, Virginia. It occurred in the vicinity of the Rappahannock River.

Battle of Winchester (Second Battle of Winchester) (June 13–15, 1863): This battle occurred in Winchester, Virginia, which was a strategic town in the Shenandoah Valley. Confederate General Richard Ewell's forces defeated Union General Robert Milroy's garrison, securing control of the area.

Battle of Aldie (June 17, 1863): The Battle of Aldie was part of the wider cavalry engagements known as the Battle of Middleburg, which occurred as part of the Gettysburg campaign. Union and Confederate cavalry clashed in fierce fighting as they vied for control of key positions.

Battle of Middleburg (June 17–19, 1863): The Battle of Middleburg took place near the town of Middleburg, Virginia. It involved both mounted and dismounted actions between Union and Confederate cavalry forces.

With this portion of the campaign over, Lee was ready to cross the Potomac River and enter Maryland. How he would deploy his cavalry was essential to his plan.

What did Lee Order?

The narrative begins on the morning of June 22, 1863, when Stuart asked Lee for guidance as to which route he should take while following the infantry into enemy territory. If he moved down the Shenandoah Valley west of the Blue Ridge Mountains, he might alert Union cavalry to Lee’s carefully screened advance. The alternative was to move east from Rector’s Cross Roads and cross the Potomac between Maj. Gen. Joseph Hooker’s Union army and Washington, D.C. which  might throw the Federals into confusion.

In fact, two written orders were given to Stuart:

On June 22, the first written order instructed Stuart to take 3 brigades and cross into “… Maryland and take position on General Ewell's right, place yourself in communication with him, guard his flank, keep him informed of the enemy's movements, and collect all the supplies you can for the use of the army."

On June 23, a second order was sent to Stuart, which gave further orders for movement depending on whether or not Hooker was moving.

On the night of June 23, a letter was sent. This letter has never been found, but it was received by Stuart’s adjutant, Major Henry B McClellan, who recalled the contents in detail after the war which gave Stuart discretion and even encouragement  to pass behind the Union army. The letter told Stuart he could move “if General Hooker’s army remains inactive” and simultaneously advised Stuart to enter Maryland west of the Blue Ridge Mountains or “pass around” the Federals east of the mountains and then “feel the right of Ewell’s troops.” Besides giving Stuart two different routes to take, Lee no longer was emphasizing the link up with Ewell and guard his flank.

Lee's instructions to Stuart were somewhat ambiguous and open to interpretation. Moreover, the conflicting nature and ambiguity surrounding the route Stuart was expected to take contributed to the resulting misunderstanding.  Stuart was expected to guard the mountain passes with part of his force while the ANV was still south of the Potomac, and then to cross the river with the remainder of the army and screen the right flank of Ewell's Second Corps. Lee's specific orders to Stuart were to move northward, screen the Confederate army's right flank, and maintain contact with Lee's forces. Lee expected Stuart to gather information on the enemy's location, strength, and intentions, and to report back promptly.

Lee instructed Stuart to keep the Army of Northern Virginia informed of the movements and activities of the Union Army. Lee's orders emphasized the importance of timely and accurate information. He clearly wanted Stuart to leave enough cavalry behind to cover the mountain passes in the army's rear and cover Ewell's advance with the rest of his force. The order didn't give specifics how to do this, leaving Stuart much discretion as to how to accomplish these goals.

Stuart chose to accompany him his three best brigades, commanded by Brig. Gen. Wade Hampton, Brig. Gen. Fitzhugh Lee, and Col. John R. Chambliss (replacing the wounded Brig. Gen. W.H.F. "Rooney" Lee). The brigades Stuart left behind included Imboden's Valley brigade temporarily attached to the army and more used to partisan activity and the two "regular" brigades of Robertson and Jones. Robertson was considered the weakest cavalry commander and Jones, while good, was appropriately nicknamed "Grumble" because he was not easy to get along with. Lee did not trust these brigades or their commanders as much as Stuart and the three brigades he took with him. Stuart sent General Robertson very specific orders as to what he was supposed to do.

Stuart sent his request for guidance to Lee through I Corps commander Lt. Gen. James Longstreet, who gave his recommendation on June 23: “I think your passage of the Potomac by our rear at the present will, in a measure, disclose our plans. You had better not leave us, therefore, unless you can take the route in rear of the enemy.” Later that day, Lee responded with his second order, stating: “If you find that he [Hooker] is moving northward, and that two brigades can guard the Blue Ridge and take care of your rear, you can move with the other three into Maryland, and take position on General [Richard] Ewell’s right, place yourself in communication with him, guard his flank, keep him informed of the enemy’s movements, and collect all the supplies you can for the use of the army.”

Stuart's interpretation of these conflicting orders, combined with his own decisions, led to his prolonged absence from Lee's main army and the subsequent lack of reliable reconnaissance and communication. Lee expected Stuart to gather information on the enemy's location, strength, and intentions, and to report back promptly. However, Stuart's interpretation of the orders, combined with his desire for personal glory and the allure of circumnavigating the Union army, led him to engage in an extended raid around the Union forces rather than maintaining close contact with Lee's army as Lee had intended.

Stuart Starts Out

Stuart and his three brigades departed Salem Depot at 1 a.m. on June 25. At this moment, the Union army's movement north had begun. Thus, his route was blocked by Hancock’s II Corps, forcing him to veer farther to the east than either he or General Lee had anticipated. This prevented Stuart from linking up with Ewell, which was part of his mission.

Stuart's decision to capture a wagon train at Rockville, Maryland on June 28, 1863, was based on several factors. Stuart believed that seizing the wagon train would yield valuable supplies and provisions for the Confederate army. It could have provided them with much-needed food, ammunition, and other resources that would support their operations. Rockville is indeed extraordinarily close to the city limits even today, about 20 miles. Stuart claimed that that were it not for his fatigued horses "he would have marched down the 7th Street Road [and] took Abe & Cabinet prisoners.

Additionally, Stuart may have viewed the wagon train capture as an opportunity to disrupt Union supply lines and create panic and confusion among the Union forces. By inflicting damage and depriving the enemy of vital supplies, Stuart aimed to weaken the Union's logistical capabilities and potentially hinder their ability to respond effectively. Furthermore, capturing such a large wagon train could have boosted Confederate morale and showcased Stuart's cavalry as a formidable force. It might have been seen as a way for Stuart to demonstrate his effectiveness as a commander and regain his reputation, which had suffered due to the earlier criticisms in southern newspapers.

However, it's worth noting that Stuart's decision to prioritize capturing the wagon train instead of gathering critical intelligence on the Union army's movements further delayed his reunion with General Robert E. Lee's forces. Although this train would be a logistical hindrance to Stuart's advance, he interpreted Lee's orders as placing importance on gathering supplies. This is entirely consistent with Lee’s objectives and goals of the campaign, and his own actions.

Stuart then attempted to ride around the Union army, starting in its rear, which to his surprise, turned out to become its east flank as the Union army moved north to meet the threat.

What happened to Stuart?

Part of the reason for Stuart’s tardiness was that he was caught up in the rear and flank of the Union army. From the time he crossed the Potomac to arriving at Gettysburg required nearly 8 days of non-stop marching for over 200 miles and fighting nearly every day.  Stuart engaged in 4 skirmishes and 3 actual battles trying to make his way to find Ewell. Skirmishes occurred at Thoroughfare Gap June 25 , Fairfax Courthouse June 27, Rockville June 28, and Westminster June 29; Battles at Hanover June 30, Hunterstown July 2, and Carlisle July 2.. Few accounts of Stuart’s ride explains that he wasn’t lost or just lollygagging; he was in fact in real trouble and it took great shrewdness merely to get to Gettysburg at all with his command intact. His men marched incessantly for 8 days and nights.

Hooker’s movements during this time should not have been a surprise to him, Stuart sent a dispatch to General Lee on June 27 that Hooker had crossed the Potomac River. It never reached General Lee, but a copy did reach Richmond; no one there bothered to confirm this with the Commanding General.

Moreover, at least 5000 cavalry had been left behind with Lee. General Robertson the commander of that force knew that Hooker had crossed the Potomac June 25-27 but failed to inform Generals Longstreet and Lee. Further, despite the direct order by Stuart to join Lee in force when Hooker advanced, Robertson instead guarded mountain gaps and the baggage train and never arrived at the battle.

The ANV moves North

By June 27, 1863, General Lee had accomplished his objective of wrecking the B&O RR and was moving up the Cumberland Valley.  JEB Stuart had torn up telegraph lines and rail north of DC. Gen. Richard S. Ewell’s  forces, moving ahead of the main body of Lee’s army in south-central Pennsylvania, had already disrupted railroad operations on the Gettysburg Railroad east of Gettysburg and on the Northern Central Railway near York.

On June 30, Jubal Early, who would go on to blame every other Confederate general at Gettysburg for its loss, and was one of Stuart’s most vociferous critics after the war, heard the sound of the battle at Hanover. Yet, he did nothing to discover who was fighting, despite knowing that Stuart was supposed to be finding him. Maps show that Early was within 5 miles of the battle, and that had contact been made, Stuart could have been present at Gettysburg July 1.

Conclusion

General Lee gave Stuart vague and conflicting orders which modern historians believe he could not have achieved given Hooker’s interim movements. Had he given Stuart a specific route, though, or recognized that he would require the cavalry to perform reconnaissance, he should not have allowed Stuart to stray behind the Union lines.

Within the discretion General Lee gave to Stuart, Stuart can not be blamed entirely for his choice of mission or how he tried to accomplish it. No one had any idea that the Federal position was so fluid at precisely this time. The raid itself was somewhat successful, and in accordance with Lee’s orders.  Stuart was fortunate to be able to fight his way out of a trap of his own making.

However, the loss of the cavalry as reconnaissance at this critical moment must be blamed on Stuart.  He was not located to fulfill his obligations to inform Lee of the movement of the Union army. Lee, by his own fault, was as unaware of Hooker’s position as Hooker was of his as he moved north into Pennsylvania.

Stuart followed Lee’s orders but not perhaps in its spirit. Stuart’s raid did not deprive Lee of the cavalry needed to monitor his opponent’s movements. However, he left in command an officer who was not skilled enough to do so successfully.

He must share the blame for having affected the course of the campaign and the outcome of the Battle of Gettysburg in his quest for glory and redemption.

What do you think of General Jeb Stuart’s absence? Let us know below.

Now, if you missed it, read Lloyd’s piece on how the Confederacy funded its war effort here.