Sectional conflict between the agricultural South and the industrializing North had existed since the earliest days of the Republic. The South, made rich first by tobacco and then by cotton, wanted to import manufactured goods from Europe cheaply; the North wanted high import taxes to protect its growing industries.
And of course, there was the question of slavery. The South not only wanted to keep slavery in the "old South," they wanted to expand it to the western territories and new states coming into the Union. Most Northerners wanted, if not to end slavery, then to contain it and keep it out of the West.
The 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, candidate of the newly-formed Republican Party, which stood firmly for "free labor," brought matters to a head. South Carolina seceded from the Union in December, 1860, even before Lincoln took office. Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas followed.
Upper South states such as Virginia and North Carolina, with economies less dependent on slave labor, waited and hoped that the crisis would blow over. But when the newly-inaugurated Lincoln sent gunboats to Charleston Harbor to reinforce Fort Sumter, whose commander had refused to surrender it to the Confederates, the Southerners fired on them. Lincoln called for the militia to put down the rebellion, and the war was on.
The First Modern War The Civil War is the central event in United States history, and some 120 years after the South's surrender, it still fascinates Americans -- and many foreigners. The fascination is well-deserved, because if a war can be described as "classic," then the Civil War was a classic war.
The War Between the States, as many Southerners still call it, was the first "modern" war. Union and Confederate soldiers represent the first modern, mass armies, not seen in Europe until World War I. And the strategy of total warfare with which the North finally won foreshadowed the global conflicts of the twentieth century. When Union armies laid waste to Georgia "from Atlanta to the sea" and burned the Shenandoah Valley so that "a crow couldn't feed," they were doing what aerial bombing did to European cities in World War II.
The Militia Volunteers Neither side foresaw any of this in 1861; both thought the war would be over soon. After the fall of Fort Sumter, President Lincoln called for the states to furnish 75,000 militiamen for 90 days. Those units not selected immediately had an opportunity to volunteer the next month, when Lincoln authorized the enlistment of 42,000 three-year men.
After the war's first battle, at Bull Run in Virginia, it became obvious to both sides that victory was not going to be easy. Lincoln called for 400,000 more three-year volunteers. Many of the 90-day militiamen, their enlistments expired, refumed home and joined these three-year regiments.
The Confederacy also relied on the militia to fill its armies. But after most of the militia was on active duty, both North and South tumed to conscription. The Civil War draft was based on the legal obligation to serve in the militia, with quotas for each state.
Both Civil War draft laws were riddled with loopholes and exemptions. In the South, those who owned more than 20 slaves were exempt; in the North, $300 (several years salary for a common laborer) would purchase a substitute. The wealthy men who took advantage of these exemptions led to the common expression, "a rich man's war and a poor man's fight."
Strategy and Tactics How was either side to win the war? Aging General Winfield Scott, hero of the Mexican War and commander of the Federal army when the war began, drafted a plan which eventually did lead to victory: blockade the Southern coasts, attack down her rivers, and chip away at her territory. But in 1861 Scott's plan was ridiculed as being too cumbersome and too expensive; his critics wanted to win with one big battle.
Ever since the Napoleonic wars, military theorists had taught that wars are won through victories in big, climactic battles which destroyed enemy armies. Confederate President Jefferson Davis and Army of Northern Virginia commander Robert E. Lee, both West Point graduates, believed in these theories. Lee felt that the South had too much territory to defend, and must pursue an offensive strategy to meet and destroy Union armies.
Lee's first battles as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia were the "Seven Days Battles" of the Peninsular Campaign. The Union army, well-trained by its new commander, George McClellan, advanced on the Confederate capital at Richmond in the spring of 1862.
Lee did not rest with stopping the Union advance. At Malvern Hill and Gaines Mill, he sent his troops in bloody frontal assaults against strong Union positions. The Confederates advanced in the close formations of the Napoleonic era--but the rifled weapons of 1862 were much deadlier than the muskets of 1814. This is why the Civil War was on the of the bloodiest ever fought: the tactics were essentially old-fashioned, but the weapons were modern.
In later battles Robert E. Lee improvised and improved on Napoleonic tactics by splitting his forces and replacing the frontal assault with the flank attack whenever possible. This produced Confederate victories such as Second Manassas (August 1862) a nd Chancellorsville (May 1863), textbook classics of maneuver warfare that are still studied today.
Lee's Northern Offensives Believing that the war must be carried into enemy territory, Lee took the Army of Northern Virginia on two offensives north of the Mason-Dixon line. The first, in August 1862, resulted in the battle of Antietam in Maryland. This bloodiest single day of combat in American history was a tactical draw. But it did send Lee and his battered army back into Virginia, and gave President Lincoln the battlefield success he needed to issue the Emancipation Proclamation--which freed the slaves in the rebellious states, but not those in Union border states like Kentucky and Missouri.
In June of 1863 Lee again marched north, this time into Pennsylvania. At Gettysburg, Lee was repulsed, although the Army of the Potomac was too exhausted to destroy the Confederates before they escaped back into Virginia.
War On All Fronts The Army of Northern Virginia was never decisively defeated in battle, and yet the South lost the war. This has puzzled generations of Americans, especially those from the South. But the Civil War was more than the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac battling in the eastem theater; northern victory was made possible by successes in the western theater.
Russell Weigley, a leading historian of the United States Army, feels that General Joseph E. Johnston, commander of the Confederate Army of Tennessee during the Atlanta campaign, employed a defensive strategy more suited to the South's limited resources. Even Lee's most brilliant victories meant personnel losses that the South could not afford. Johnston never fought a battle if strategic retreat was possible--and his losses were slight.
But Johnston was given command too late to save Vicksburg, which fell as Lee was retreating from Pennsylvania -- double blows from which the Confederacy could never recover. With most of Mississippi gone, Johnston had little hope of saving Atlanta. Southern armchair strategists, who also believed in the "big battle" theory, thought Johnston was a coward who wouldn't fight. He was replaced by John B. Hood, former commander of the Texas Brigade, badly wounded at Gettysburg and minus a leg since Chickamauga. Hood fought--and his army was destroyed by William T. Sherman's numerically superior forces.
The Militia's War Because the Regular Army was so small throughout the nineteenth century, and the Army Reserve was not created until 1908, the majority of United States Army units which carry Civil War battle honors are from the Army National Guard. Because of the size of the war, and the number of militia units which fought in it, it would be impossible to describe the militia's total contribution. But many of the most famous Civil War units were militia, or reorganized as militia, after the war.
The Second Wisconsin was part of the famous "Iron Brigade of the West," and the brigade came by its nickname the hard way: the Second had the highest percentage of losses in the Union Army, with 19.7% killed over the course of the war. In 1864, after Spotsylvania Courthouse, the regiment was down to 100 effectives when it was ordered home to muster out at the end of its three years' service. One hundred men nevertheless reenlisted.
Probably the most critical role in the most critical battle of the war was played at Gettysburg by a courageous Maine militia regiment and their citizen-soldier colonel. On his own initiative, Colonel Joshua Chamberlain, a former college professor, sent his men to hold a gap in the Union lines on Little Round Top. The 20th held despite savage attacks by the 15th and 47th Alabama. When the "Mainiacs" ran out of ammunition, Colonel Chamberlain ordered a bayonet charge down the hill. Many of the surpr ised Confederates were captured, and the tactically-important hill stayed in Union hands. Military historians today point to the 20th Maine at Gettysburg as not only a classic example of fighting spirit and esprit de corps, but also as proof that the conduct of one unit can sometimes be crucial to the outcome of even a large battle.
On the same day, on the other side of the battlefield, another militia regiment, the 1st Minnesota, gained the bloody distinction of ". . . sustaining the highest regimental loss in any battle, in proportion to the number engaged, in modern history." The Minnesotans' willingness to sacrifice themselves gave Union forces time to regroup behind them and avert an almost certain Confederate breakthrough.
On the Confederate side, militia regiments from 18 Virginia counties made up the "Stonewall Brigade," first wartime command of Robert E. Lee's most brilliant corps commander. Thomas J. Jackson and his brigade eamed their nickname in the first battle of the war, and they become one of the best-trained units in the Confederate Army. When Jackson embarked on his famous Shenandoah Valley campaign in 1862, he asked for his old brigade back, and they become part of "Stonewall's foot cavalry."
Few of the Brigade's original members were left to witness the surrender at Appomattox. In a perfect illustration of the high cost of Lee's offensive strategy, the brigade suffered heavy losses, even during Lee's tactical masterpiece, the Chancellorsville campaign. Eighty-one years later, in another offensive, the unit would again suffer heavy casualties when it assaulted Omaha Beach on D-Day.
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