The History of the Confederate War, Its Causes and Its Conduct. Volume 1 of 2

At that time England, France and Germany were looking with very jealous suspicion upon the rising glory of the American Republic. Their monarchs feared the influence of Democratic doctrines supported by such an object lesson as the prosperity and phenomenal growth of the American nation afforded. The tradesmen and manufacturers of those countries, equally with their statesmen, dimly but apprehensively foresaw what has since in our later time come to pass. They foresaw the conquest of the world's markets by American industry. To break up this American Union meant for them a release from these dangers, political, commercial and industrial.

Moreover, the United States Government was at that time just entering upon a new and extreme policy of protective tariff exclusion which threatened very serious detriment to the trade of the manufacturing countries of Europe. The South, being an agricultural country with scarcely any manufacturing interests, stood for the utmost possible freedom of trade. Very naturally, the manufacturing and commercial nations of Europe looked with more or less favor upon a revolution in this country, which promised to give them not only an equal commercial chance but a sentimental advantage also in the Southern markets in competition with the New England fabricators of goods, wares and merchandise.

From the very beginning, the South had looked to such impulses and interests as these as an offset to Northern superiority in numbers and resources. The South hoped from the beginning for foreign intervention. It was confidently believed that if any European nation should formally recognize the Southern Confederacy's independence, the United States would treat that recognition as equivalent to an open declaration of war. In such an event the recognizing nation must of course send its fleets to raise the blockade of Southern ports, and possibly also its battalions to stand shoulder to shoulder with the Virginians and Carolinians and Mississippians on hard fought battle fields.

The Confederate victory at Manassas, by reason of its completeness and still more by reason of its spectacular accompaniments, gave peculiar force to all these arguments in favor of that European recognition of Southern independence which must have threatened the final disruption of the American Union, the breaking down of the most dangerous trade rival of those countries, the opening of the South to absolute free trade, with a distinct preference for English, French and German over "Yankee" goods, and the political weakening of that growing impulse to republicanism which resided in the glory and greatness of the American Republic. To dissolve and destroy the Union would have been once and for all time to make an end of the most potent influence that ever existed on earth in behalf of a "world without kings, and a people supreme."

When the battle of Manassas was done, and McDowell's army had fled in panic as a disorganized mob into Washington, and was manifestly prepared to flee farther if it should be pressed with vigor, as every foreign observer expected that it would be, there was every inducement and every excuse for the recognition of the Southern Confederacy by European nations, and for their demand that the still ineffective blockade should be raised as an unjustifiable interference with international commerce. Such action on the part of France and England would undoubtedly have precipitated war between those countries and the United States, and in that war, knowing as we do the relations then existing between European nations, Austria, Italy and Prussia would very probably have joined. What the consequences would have been each reader must judge for himself, but at the very least it may be said with entire safety that such a circumstance would have added very greatly to the embarrassment of the United States Government, and to the chances of ultimate success on the part of the South.

The pretender who sat at that time upon the fraud-buttressed throne of France and called himself "Napoleon III" was ready and eager for such interference. But he dared not undertake it single handed. He sought the alliance and aid of England, and without doubt he would have secured both but for one fact. Whatever policies an English government may favor, there is always behind that government, as its master, the sentiment of the British people, and that sentiment was at that time unalterably and implacably hostile to human slavery.

It was the misfortune of the South that its contention for its own right of self-government was inseparably linked in the minds of men abroad with the cause of human bondage, against which British public sentiment revolted.

Great Britain is not a republic in our sense of the word, but under all its forms of monarchy, and with all its embarrassments of aristocratic privilege, its people actually and absolutely rule.

Its people strongly sympathized with the Southern claim of a right of autonomy. They still more strongly sympathized with themselves in their desire to cripple their greatest and most threatening commercial and industrial rival, and to get all the cotton they needed for their mills. They wanted the war to end quickly. They wanted the Southern ports opened to their ships, and the Southern cotton to be accessible again for their use. They wanted the American Union broken up. They wanted to trade with the Southern States upon equal terms or with a positive advantage over their New England competitors. But even for such sake they were unwilling to lend the power of Great Britain to the perpetuation of human slavery anywhere upon earth.

There was the fatal miscalculation of the Southerners. They reckoned with British trade interests, with British and other European political prejudice, but they did not sufficiently reckon with that British hostility to slavery which – whatever the political or trade considerations might be – would not consent to any action on the part of a British government which should even seem to make Great Britain responsible for the perpetuation of human slavery anywhere.

Thus the British government was restrained by the all-dominating British sentiment from interfering, and France did not venture to interfere alone or even with the probability of Austrian or Prussian support.

There was Russia to be reckoned with, also, and as later official publications show, the Czar not only set his face against intervention in behalf of the South, but at one critical time actually sent his fleets to American waters to menace any and every power that might assume to interpose to the detriment of the United States.

At the time, however, the Manassas victory gave great and well-justified occasion for the fear at the North that Great Britain and France, backed by the other western European powers, might be persuaded to interpose in behalf of the Confederates. For a time, therefore, the outlook for the Union was a very gloomy one, but the youth of the country continued to enlist by tens and scores of thousands, and in spite of the hostility of a political party strongly opposed to the administration and to the war itself, Mr. Lincoln's government went on with its preparations for prosecuting the war with vigor, to its predestined end.

CHAPTER XVII

Border Operations

During the long period of strange inactivity in those parts of the country where the real seat of war lay, there was a good deal of active fighting elsewhere. Some of it was severe and gave rise to stirring events, including some stoutly contested battles. But with the exception of the operations upon the Southern coasts in aid of a more effective blockade none of these conflicts had any considerable strategic importance and the story of them may with propriety be briefly told.

In Missouri the contest was in effect a civil war, in the strict acceptation of that term. It is needless and it would be tedious to recount here the proclamations, the gubernatorial manifestos, the legislative resolutions and the so-called conventional action of that state. None of these had any undisputed legal sanction whatever, though each of them claimed all possible legality. The simple fact was that a part of Missouri's people adhered to the Union and another part equally clung to the cause of the Southern Confederacy. After much confusion the Unionists formed an army under General Lyon and the Confederates assembled a strong force under General Price. Let the lawyers quibble as they please over the technicalities involved, the fact remains as already stated, that the people of Missouri were divided in sentiment; that they arrayed themselves against each other in hostile armies; and that they fought each other in considerable battles – measured by the number of men engaged and by the slaughter involved. But these battles bore no influential relation to the contest between the Union and the Confederacy, except in so far as their conduct served to occupy troops on either side who might have been much more effectively employed at those more eastern points at which the issue was in fact to be fought out to a conclusion.

At Carthage, Missouri, where General Franz Sigel attacked the Confederates on July fifth, 1861, the Federals were beaten and forced to retreat. At Dug Spring, August third, Lyon defeated McCulloch, but a week later (August the tenth), the Federals were again defeated in a severely contested battle at Wilson's Creek, and General Lyon was killed.

On the fifth of March, 1862, the two armies west of the Mississippi met in a pitched battle at Pea Ridge, Arkansas. The contest was a fierce and bloody one, involving a heavy, though unascertained loss. The Federals had distinctly the better of it, but like the Confederates at Manassas, they utterly failed to follow up their victory or in any other way to give effect to it.

It is unnecessary to relate the story of these battles in detail. They were gallant and strenuous actions, reflecting the highest credit upon the courage of the officers and men engaged on either side. But they contributed nothing whatever to the ultimate result. They played no part in the solution of the war problem. Whether the actions so gallantly fought by Federals and Confederates alike were won by the one or by the other, made no difference in the ultimate outcome of a war which was clearly destined to be decided by other men and upon other fields of larger strategic significance.

The operations in Kentucky and Tennessee, though smaller in themselves, were of much greater importance. Those states lay within the strategic field. Kentucky had officially assumed an attitude of neutrality, as has already been related, to which neither side paid or could be expected to pay the smallest attention. That state lay between the North and the South. It was absolutely necessary that each should push armed forces into and across its domain in order to get at the forces of the adversary. Moreover, Kentucky's assumption of neutrality was a transparent absurdity in itself. If it could have commanded respect, it would have interposed a neutral ground, stretching for about four hundred miles from east to west between the contending armies, neither of which would have been privileged on any account to cross it or to enter it. Thus Kentucky, while retaining its place as a state in the Union, would have stood as a protective barrier to the seceding states, of even greater value than all the armies that could have been assembled within Kentucky's borders. It would at one and the same time have held the position of a state in the Union and the most potent of all states in aid of the Confederacy.

It is necessary to explain that this Kentucky resolution of neutrality never had the complete legal sanction of the state authorities, actual or pretended; but its effect was so small that it is scarcely worth while to discuss the technicalities. The simple fact was that Kentucky furnished men to both sides and that its legislative and its executive authorities were never at any time fully and legally agreed upon any policy whatever.

In a history that takes account of facts rather than of theories, of events rather than of resolutions, there seems no occasion to follow this subject further, except to say that both Federals and Confederates presently pushed their armies into Kentucky and tried conclusions there, with results that must form the subject of future pages in this history.

In Maryland the struggle ended in the adherence of the state to the Union, while a large part of its vigorous young manhood went South and enlisted in the Confederate army. It was this division of sentiment, this separation of families, this arraying of brother against brother, that constituted the tragedy of the Confederate war.

In North Carolina and in Tennessee there was a strong Union sentiment among the mountaineers. It could not control either state, but it resulted in the enlistment of a large number of hardy volunteers in the Union armies, and in the organization of an efficient "underground railroad," by means of which Northern soldiers escaping from Southern prisons were aided in their journey to the North.

In Virginia the anti-secession sentiment found expression in an act of secession from secession. The western half of that state had scarcely any property interest in slavery and scarcely any sympathy with the institution. The men of that region had accepted the teachings of Thomas Jefferson, and George Wythe, and a score of other Virginian statesmen, to the effect that slavery was a curse which it was their duty to extirpate as soon as might be. The secession of their state seemed to offer them an opportunity. If secession was to be the order of the day, why should not they, as representatives of the western and non-slave-holding half of their state, repudiate secession from the Union by themselves seceding from their seceding state?

Upon this hint they acted. They proceeded to set up the state of West Virginia under an autonomy granted by the National Government. It was in direct violation of the Federal Constitution thus to divide a state without its own consent, but the thing was done in war time, and when war is on the rigid letter of the law is very apt to be disregarded in the interest of general results. At any rate the thing was done, and West Virginia has ever since 1863 held her place as one of the states of the Union.

Thus were the border states arrayed in the war. Thus was the issue made up. Thus were the lines drawn for the momentous conflict.

CHAPTER XVIII

The Blockade – The Conquest of the Coast and the Neglect to Follow up the Advantage thus Gained

As soon as the fact was recognized that war existed between the Northern and the Southern states it was quite a matter of course and of common sense that the Federal Government should endeavor to shut in the Confederates by a blockade that should cut them off from all commerce with the outer world.

The South was almost exclusively an agricultural country. It had scanty means of supplying itself with any of those articles of manufacture which enable communities to live and to carry on war. It was sadly deficient not only in capacity to create arms, ammunition, and other fighting equipments, but also in factories capable of turning out clothing, shoes, medicines, and the like either for military or for non-military use.

For all these things the Confederates depended upon importation, and the obvious policy of the Federal Government was to prevent such importation.

If that could have been completely done, the war must of necessity have come to an early and merciful end. And there is no doubt that it might have been done during the first years of the struggle if practical common sense had been reinforced by executive ability commensurate with the demands of the occasion. As a matter of fact this was never completely accomplished until the war was in its last throes. To the very end the Confederate soldiers were clad in English-made cloth, shod with English-tanned leather, and largely fed upon Cincinnati bacon and corned beef which had been shipped to Nassau in the Bahamas and thence carried into Confederate ports by the daring of the English captains and the English crews of English-built and English-owned blockade running steamers. Very naturally the Federal Government understood and appreciated all these conditions, and very naturally it sought to take advantage of them by blockading Southern ports and thus preventing or at least embarrassing those importations upon which the South must mainly depend for its powder, its bullets, its clothing, its shoes, its arms and its provisions.

Accordingly, one of the earliest acts of the Administration was the proclamation of a blockade of the Southern ports. This was issued as early as the nineteenth of April, 1861, two days after the Virginia Convention adopted an ordinance of secession and thus made war a certainty.

There is this peculiarity about the international law of blockade, that the ships of no nation are under obligation to respect a blockade until it shall be made effective. That is to say, until the nation proclaiming the blockade can put a sufficient naval force at the mouth of each blockaded harbor to prevent the entry of ships, no foreign shipmasters are bound to respect the proclamation of blockade, and their blockade-running ships are not subject to seizure in the attempt to pass the paper barriers erected.

At the first, of course, the blockade of Southern ports was technical rather than real. A foreign ship running in or out was not legally subject to seizure or destruction because the blockade was manifestly ineffective. But by impressing ferry-boats and every other craft that could carry guns into the naval service, the Federal Government was able presently to make its blockade so far effective that those ships which essayed to "run" it did so at risk of capture and with the certainty that capture must mean the confiscation of both ship and cargo.

But so profitable was this commerce that the merchants and shipmasters engaged in it were ready to take all the risks involved, for the sake of its enormous pecuniary returns. It was a matter of easy reckoning that a single cargo carried either way and successfully delivered, would pay for the loss of the ship and cargo on the return voyage, and leave a rich margin of profit besides.

Moreover a close blockade was simply impossible. Not one ship in a dozen that attempted to pass out or in, was in actual fact captured or driven ashore. The number of ships engaged in blockade running was steadily reduced by the increasing dangers encountered, but the traffic continued, with no effective interruption, until near the end of the war, the chief effect of the blockade being to increase the profits of the English shipowners and shipmasters who engaged in the perilous commerce and enormously to enhance the market value of goods of every kind at the South.

An ounce of quinine that cost $2.80 in Nassau was worth $1,100 or $1,200 in Charleston, while the Confederate money received for the quinine would buy cotton at ten cents a pound which had a value at the very least of half a dollar a pound in gold at Nassau. On such terms the human instinct of gain made it certain that the blockade, however legally effective it might be made, would be broken through by daring shipmasters so long as the war should last and precisely that is what in fact happened.

But in aid of the blockade, and in aid of the general policy of shutting the South in and compelling it to rely exclusively upon its own inadequate resources, the Federal Government promptly dispatched forces to the South, to capture the seacoast fortifications there and to make of the coast a Federal instead of a Confederate possession and stronghold. On the twenty-ninth of August, 1861, an expedition under command of General B. F. Butler, captured the forts at Cape Hatteras. On the seventh and eighth of November another expedition reduced the works at Port Royal and Hilton Head in South Carolina, thus making of the coast strongholds important strategic positions for the Northern arms. Later the whole coast, except the great harbor, was conquered.

It must always be a matter of astonishment to the historian that greater use was not made of the advantages thus gained at the beginning of the war. It is true that the geography of the Carolinian coast country specially lent itself to the defense of that region by small forces arrayed against greatly superior numbers. It is true, for example, that at Pocotatigo, on the twenty-second of October, 1862, two batteries of artillery and a company or two of dismounted cavalry numbering in all only 350 men, being reinforced late in the day by about four hundred more, succeeded in repelling the all-day assault of not less than three thousand and ended by driving the Federal force back to its ships. This was due in part to the peculiarly defensive nature of the ground and in part to the certainty that the Federal forces could not remain over night at Pocotatigo without finding nearly every man among them stricken with that dire disease, "country fever," before morning.

But all day long at Pocotatigo the Federals had the Charleston and Savannah railroad on their left less than a mile away and with absolutely no obstacle whatsoever between them and its possession. Beyond the railroad line lay the high, healthful pine lands. In brief there was no reason whatever, aside from mere blundering, why they should not then and there have seized upon the Charleston and Savannah railroad, made themselves masters of the entire coast, and proceeded to the easy conquest or isolation of Charleston on the one hand and Savannah on the other.

This particular matter is here mentioned only because it serves to illustrate a larger truth. From the time when the Port Royal and the Hilton Head forts were captured there was never an hour when a capable and resolute general in command of 5,000 men – and 50,000 might easily have been sent to him – could not have made himself master of the main line of Southern communication, master of Charleston, master of Savannah and practically master of South Carolina and its neighboring states. An enterprising officer engaged in accomplishing this would, of course, have been reinforced to any desirable extent, and a campaign inland at that point and at that time would have promised results of the utmost consequence.

Here was another of the errors that served to prolong through four years a war that ought to have been brought to an end during its first campaign, and the needless and senseless prolongation of which inflicted almost incredible loss and suffering upon the South and subjected the North to financial burdens and human sacrifices of the most stupendous character.

The blockade was early made "effective" in that degree which international law requires – so effective that shipmasters trying to pass through it had no conceivable right of redress if their ships were captured, or blown to pieces, or run ashore by the blockading squadron. It was never, even unto the end, made so effective as to prevent British merchantmen from trafficking at uncertain intervals between Nassau and the Southern ports. It did not and could not put an end to the importation of the necessaries of war into Southern ports; but it made such importation so enormously expensive, even if measured by the cotton exports on which the trade was based, as greatly to cripple the Confederacy in its finances. The price of goods imported at such hazard and with such difficulty was made great enough to cover the easy contingency of capture upon the outward as well as upon the inward voyage.

He who would understand the events of that period must constantly bear in mind that during the first year or nearly that, of its duration this war of ours was conducted mainly by incapacity on both sides, by martinet captains and incapables in civil office who had been suddenly thrust into positions vastly too great for their abilities.

CHAPTER XIX

The Era of Incapacity

This was the situation during the year 1861 and the early part of the year 1862. There were destined soon to come upon the scene two great masters of the military art – the one upon the one side and the other upon the other – Ulysses S. Grant and Robert E. Lee. But during the early part of the struggle neither of these great men was in a position of mastery or control. Grant was struggling against all the difficulties that technicality and official jealousy could plant in his pathway. He found it difficult to get into the service at all. He was a West Point graduate and he had served with distinction in the regular army, but he had long ago resigned his commission. He had thus forfeited all claim to command those who had remained in the service and who had been promoted by seniority. These, and not Grant, were made generals.