(Vanity) 18 Questions on The Civil War

Even winning at Gettysburg though is no guarantee of a southern victory in the war.

It couldn't have have brought about a truly military victory in any case -- by that time the Confederacy would not have been able to sustain the sort of offensive necessary to reach DC, for the same reasons you give for them reaching Philadelphia.

Confederate hopes for victory at Gettysburg would have depended on its impact to Union morale, and the war-weariness that would result from the expensive effort that would have been needed to oust them from the Gettysburg area.

Wow.

Did the Southern states "have it in" for Lincoln from the beginning?

You have to remember that there were no Republicans in the Southern states. As a party opposed to the expansion of slavery, the Republican party was against everything the Southern leadership stood for. Election laws were different in 1860. I've heard it said, though I cannot confirm it, that it was up to the individual political parties to distribute ballots with their candidate on it. If that is so, then the lack of any organized party in the Southern states meant that there wouldn't be any Republican party.

This of course isn't true in South Carolina, which didn't hold an election for president until after Reconstruction. The South Carolina legislature decided who would get the state's electoral votes.

It should also be noted that even if the Democrats had not split into three parties Lincoln would still have been elected. Lincoln took a clear majority of the votes cast in all but two of the states he carried. Had he lost those two - California and Oregon - he still would have had 173 electoral votes. Still a majority of the 203 electoral votes cast.

2. The eventual hanging of John Brown is seen as the spark that set off the war--at least as conventional wisdom presented by Burns is. Why is this event thought of as the catalyst for the war as opposed to the actual secession of the Confederate states?

Wikipedia has an extensive article on John Brown. Link is here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Brown_%28abolitionist%29

It is long but a pretty good read. The one telling point from the article, for me at least, is this:

"The raid on Harpers Ferry is generally thought to have done much to set the nation on a course toward civil war. Southern slaveowners, hearing initial reports that hundreds of abolitionists were involved, were relieved the effort was so small. Yet they feared other abolitionists would emulate Brown and attempt to lead slave rebellions. Therefore the South reorganized the decrepit militia system. These militias, well-established by 1861, became a ready-made Confederate army, making the South better prepared for war than it otherwise might have been."

Had the South started out as ill-prepared as the North in the spring of 1861 (or, conversely, had the North been as prepared as the South), there is no telling how the first year or so of the Civil War would have played out. However, the lopsided advantages of the North in population, raw materials, manufacturing, finances, warships, etc., made a Northern victory certain; despite hesitant,even bad, Union generalship in the beginning, it really did came down to a matter of time. (This is what Shelby Foote is referring to in his "fighting with one arm tied behind its back" remark.)

General Grant's 1864 summer campaign in Virginia was pure attrition warfare. The Union had the resources by this time to grimly play that game. For General Lee, even when he was winning, he was losing because of how much it was costing him in casualties, the key irreplaceable resource.

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The eventual hanging of John Brown is seen as the spark that set off the war--at least as conventional wisdom presented by Burns is.

You can argue all day about what constituted the actual start. Southerners like to point to Brown because it deflects the blame from themselves. Brown was a homicidal maniac, and though he enjoyed support among many abolitionists he was never in a place to start a slave uprising. Those who supported Brown and his actions were similar to those who support people who kill abortionists or blow up abortion clinics. They come from the fringe.

It should also be noted that Brown was convicted and executed for treason against the Commonwealth of Virginia. Brown was not born in Virgina, had never lived in Virginia, and owed no allegiance to Virginia. How he could commit treason is beyond me.

Most interesting. Thanks for starting this thread.

3. When the Confederacy was formed, why didn't European nations (England, France, Spain, etc.) recognize the Confederacy diplomatically? What prevented them from doing so as the South had early success militarily?

Prior to January 1, 1863, the European powers were not willing to stick their necks out and support the confederacy unless and until the South showed it was capable of winning the war. If they were going to alienate the United States it would only be if they were backing a winner. The closest they came was after Second Manassas when Palmerston's government scheduled discussions on recognition for when the government resumed in October. Before then, Lee lost at Antietam and Lincoln issued his Emancipation Proclamation which made ending slavery a stated goal of the war. After that happened, the Palmerston government was not willing to ally itself so closely with a cause based on defending slavery. No other European power was willing to recognize the confederacy without England. Russia came out in support of the United States. And any chance of European intervention was effectively dead.

Those are a very fine set of responses.

I would only add, per No. 3, that there was a vigorous debate in the UK over recognition of the Confederacy, and that the British did supply arms and naval vessels to the rebels.

And as for No. 13, I don't think you can omit a mention of the NYC draft riots, fueled by Democratic politicians and mobs of Irish immigrants. Classic “identity” politics, no so different from today.

I have a degree in History from the University of Nebraska. I studied American History in particular quite extensively.

1. Did the Southern states “have it in” for Lincoln from the beginning? In the election of 1860, Lincoln was not on the ballot in about 10 states. Was this due primarily to the Republican party being a very new political party or did many Southern states see something about Lincoln that the rest of the country didn’t?

The Republican Party in 1860 was opposed to >the spread< of slavery into more American Territory. Lincoln himself formed the new Republican party in 1850’s in direct response to Popular Sovereignty.

But even with Popular Sovereignty, the Slave states were starting to lose out. Up to that time, two states would often come in to the Union at a time - one slave, one free. The balance was starting to go in favor of the Free side.

Slave states were terrified that slavery would be banned, despite Lincoln repeatedly saying he simply opposed to the spread of slavery. (The Abolitionists already had a candidate.)

Despite this - Lincoln was left off the ballot in several states mostly because of the slave issue. But Lincoln was always considered one of the front runners.

2. The eventual hanging of John Brown is seen as the spark that set off the war—at least as conventional wisdom presented by Burns is. Why is this event thought of as the catalyst for the war as opposed to the actual secession of the Confederate states?

John Brown attempted to lead a slave rebellion. If I remember correctly, Brown wanted a lot of violence and blood.

Most people in the south were terrified of slave uprising. There had been uprisings in the past, and they were always bloody even when they were put down. Also remember that John Brown reveled in “Bleeding Kansas”.

Brown was hoping that others both white and black would follow his example. In the slave states, this became hysteria. Southerners believed that many in the North agreed with Brown. Actually a lot of people in the North were just as shocked as people in the south.

All this aside - I believe Brown’s uprising had less to do with the Civil War than other things (like the Dred Scott Decision.)

3. When the Confederacy was formed, why didn’t European nations (England, France, Spain, etc.) recognize the Confederacy diplomatically? What prevented them from doing so as the South had early success militarily?

England didn’t want war with the US. They had plenty of cotton anyway. There were a lot of diplomatic and trade ties to the northern states. Moreover, England was in the middle of stamping out slavery in it’s own empire. It would have been a mess politically in Britain. France had similiar reasons.

Note that this did not prevent Britain from selling arms and equipment to both sides.

4. (With apologies to Paleo Conservative) Why were the names of specific battles different between the Union and Confederates? e.g.: The first and second battles of Bull Run/Mannassas, the South referring to names of towns, the North to creeks, rivers and bodies of water.

Probably just cultural preferences.

5. Why wasn’t the Confederacy able to march further west, towards the Pacific Coast (with the Battle of Glorieta Pass in New Mexico and Battle of Pichaco Peak in Arizona as two examples). Was the South stretched too thin to make this possible?

For starters most of the population was in the East. So were most of the political structures. There was also the style of warfare at the time.

By the end of the war both sides had the same goal: make the other side tired of fighting. They did this by destroying each other’s armies, capturing each other’s capitals and making each other’s civilian populations suffer.

None of these targets were in the sparsely populated west. Moreover, it would take a lot of time, energy and resources to march west. You also have to remember that Native indian tribes would probably have greeted both sides with hostility.

6. Throughout the film, the name of Frederick Douglass keeps surfacing, again keeping with the theme of the war being exclusively over slavery in the minds of many. Was Douglass anything more than a mere activist or was his impact much more significant?

Douglas was a hero of the abolitionist movement. He traveled the north showing his wounds and telling his story. His efforts won over neutrals to anti slave sentiment. Odds are his efforts probably influenced people like Lincoln, but it’s hard to say.

7. West Virginia became a state during the war, which as we know were 63 counties of “Old” Virginia that left the Confederacy to join (or more accurately re-join) the Union. As a rank amateur historian, I would think this would have been a very significant point in the war, where one half of a southern state breaks away and forms its own state and that state joins the Union, but it isn’t. Why?

West Virginia was a mountainous area that was sparsely populated. By the time WV broke away both sides had quite a bit on their minds. Remember most of the battles of the Civil War were in Virginia and Tennessee.

8. Around this time was Lee’s campaign to march north, which would lead to the eventual battle at Gettysburg. Would it have been much effective for the Rebels to take Maryland, making sure they fall to the Rebels rather than to go that far north?

Hard to say. Hindsight is always 20/20. Lee was at his apex when he invaded the north. He had a big, well supplied army at the time. He was probably trying to bring fear to the border states so as they would pressure the Union to end the war.

Maryland was under martial law at the time. I don’t know if he could have freed it even if he tried.

9. What are we to make of George McClellan (sic)? I’ve seen on previous threads that Hood and Bragg weren’t the most competent on the Rebel side, can that assertion also be made of McClellan?

McClellan was a pompous ass. There are stories of Lincoln going to his house to talk to him and when McClellan wasn’t home Lincoln would wait. When the General did get home, he’d go to bed rather than talk to Lincoln.

McClellan fought in a “Napoleanic” style. Basically he defended territory. He also wanted to minimize his losses (which made him very popular with his troops). Lincoln wanted a general who would go get Lee and Lee’s army. He thought if Lee were defeated soundly, the war would be over and Lincoln was right.

After Lincoln fired McClellan, McClellan went on to run against Lincoln in 1864 on the “we give up” ticket that Dems still use today.

10. Assume for a moment that Pickett’s charge at Gettysburg works and the Rebels win there. Would it be entirely possible to have seen a major battle and possible bloodbath in Philadelphia or Baltimore? (Something that would have possibly dwarfed the casualties and deaths at Shiloh, Antietam, etc.?)

When Lee went in to Pa, he gave explicit orders to his men not to rough up the civilian population. I believe Lee would have continued with these orders had they won.

11. Was Lincoln in actual danger of losing the 1864 election? Could the Democrats have nominated a candidate other than McClelland that would have given them a chance to win?

Lincoln thought he was going to lose. He was blessed with Sherman’s capture of Atlanta in Sept, which probably turned the tide of the election.

Would the Dems have won if they nominated someone else? Probably not.

12. For the Rebels, what point did the wheels come off of their campaign? (Assuming that it was a point other than Gettysburg.) Would the South had more success later on had Stonewall Jackson not died at Chancellorsville?

First question is hard to say. I myself would argue that Gettysburg was the end. It was popularly thought (by the south) that a victory at Gettysburg would seal the victory for their side. That’s why it was so hard fought.

Jackson was a huge loss. The thing about him was that he didn’t give up. Would he have turned the tide of the war? Probably not. Nathan Bedford Forrest was also a great general but in the end, didn’t help.

13. What kind of “anti-war” sentiment was going on in the North (beyond the notorious “Copperheads”)? Did the South make any mistakes in not taking advantage of this?

Lincoln tended to throw people sympathetic to the south in jail. He suspended habeas corpus to keep people on his side. (I had to giggle when I saw left wing college professors praising Lincoln in some recent interviews.) This kind of intimidation did keep some of the peaceniks down, although one of the biggest riots in American history occured in New York in 1863 over the draft.

14. The prison camp at Andersonville, GA is an intriguing and horrific story as “The Civil War” presents. Did Henry Wirz deserve to be charged, convicted and later hanged for war crimes or did this occur due to the aftermath of Lincoln’s assassination?

...I’m not as familiar with Andersonville. That said, I do know that POW camps in the Civil War were awful places no matter where they were located. Men tended to starve and freeze to death or die of disease. But this happened on both sides.

15. John Wilkes Booth, the murderer of Lincoln, was an actor. Anyone else think this was an interesting precursor to the acting community of today to get that involved in politics?

Acting is about passion. It attracts people who are passionate about things. *shrugs*

16. Shelby Foote mentions that “The North fought that war with one arm behind its back.” He would go on to say that “if there had been more Confederate success that the North’s ‘other arm’ would have come around and that the South had little chance to win.” Is Foote accurate here in this regard or were there enough chances for the Rebels to win given the battles that they were able to win?

Hard to say. The original northern idea was to win the war bloodlessly. When this became apparent it wouldn’t happen, they took the gloves off. That said - early Northern generals tended to hold back, but this was probably due more to their incompetence than any larger design.

17. Lee had a small number of blacks fighting in his army later on in the war, but as Burns asserts, it was due to Lee running out of men. Is there anything to suggest that blacks fought on the Rebel side before this point?

Nathan Bedford Forrest was a slave trader before the war. When the war started, Forrest created his own company using his own money. He included several blacks amongst his men (only one ran away.)

18. Had the Rebels secured a victory—and in this particular context, with Washington having fallen and Lincoln being forced to recognize the Confederacy as a sovereign nation, would it have been at all possible to have had a second war, going on possibly into the 20th Century?

Very possible. But just as unlikely, so who knows?

6. Throughout the film, the name of Frederick Douglass keeps surfacing, again keeping with the theme of the war being exclusively over slavery in the minds of many. Was Douglass anything more than a mere activist or was his impact much more significant?

He was no mere activist. He was a leader of the abolitionist movement, well respected by many Northerners, and an eloquent spokesman for his cause. He was more like a Martin Luther King of his day than an Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson.

2. The eventual hanging of John Brown is seen as the spark that set off the war--at least as conventional wisdom presented by Burns is. Why is this event thought of as the catalyst for the war as opposed to the actual secession of the Confederate states?

Read up on the Nat Turner Rebellion & the Fugitive Slave Act. This will show the stark differences about how the sections of the country viewed the John Brown & the Raid on Harper's Ferry.

4. (With apologies to Paleo Conservative) Why were the names of specific battles different between the Union and Confederates? e.g.: The first and second battles of Bull Run/Mannassas, the South referring to names of towns, the North to creeks, rivers and bodies of water.

European military tradition typically refered to battles by the nearest major geographical feature -- usually a river or stream. Military Departments & the Armies that operated from them were typically named after major rivers (Army of the Tennessee, Army of the Potomac, Army of the Ohio, etc.)

The Confederacy turned this bit of military tradition on its head. After a brief period as the Army of the Potomac (yep, same name as the opposing army), it became the Army of Northern Virgina. Similarly the South referred to battles by the nearest town. Frequently these towns were not much more than a few farms and a road junction.

8. Around this time was Lee's campaign to march north, which would lead to the eventual battle at Gettysburg. Would it have been much effective for the Rebels to take Maryland, making sure they fall to the Rebels rather than to go that far north?

The Potomac River was a major obstacle that could only be forded fairly far upstream. You do not want to put your forces in front of such a river that could flood behind you. The Union Army could cross at a place of its choosing using its riverine forces & cut you off from your supplies. Lee almost lost a good chunk of the ANV after Gettyburg when the Potomac flooded & his army was temporarily trapped in Williamsport, MD.

10. Assume for a moment that Pickett's charge at Gettysburg works and the Rebels win there. Would it be entirely possible to have seen a major battle and possible bloodbath in Philadelphia or Baltimore? (Something that would have possibly dwarfed the casualties and deaths at Shiloh, Antietam, etc.?) Personal opinion: York(PA) would have been evacuated and a new union defensive line would have been thrown up along the Lower Susquehanna River. It would have been thinly held since the bulk of the AoP would have withdrawn toward DC. Harrisburg may have fallen. The B&O Railroad would have been cut, isolating Pittsburgh & the Ohio Valley.

Depending on the activity of the AoP, Lee might have crossed the Susquehanna to threaten Lancaster & Philadelphia, but I doubt it. I think instead the ANV would have Summered in PA and withdrawn to Winter quarters in Virgina & the Shennendoah Valley.

12. For the Rebels, what point did the wheels come off of their campaign? (Assuming that it was a point other than Gettysburg.) Would the South had more success later on had Stonewall Jackson not died at Chancellorsville?

Gettysburg/Vicksburg was a double-loss that was equivalent to the twin German (WW2) defeats at Stalingrad & Tunisia. In addition to losing ground entire field armies were lost (or in the case of the ANV severly mauled).

13. What kind of "anti-war" sentiment was going on in the North (beyond the notorious "Copperheads")? Did the South make any mistakes in not taking advantage of this?

Go rent "Gangs of New York". Part of the backdrop is the NYC draft riots during which immigrants lynched freed black men. After mid-1863 the Union came to rely on the Draft to replace manpower (also Black Volunteers). It was VERY unpopular, and a factor that might have been responsible for a Lincoln defeat in 1864.

16. Shelby Foote mentions that "The North fought that war with one arm behind its back." He would go on to say that "if there had been more Confederate success that the North's 'other arm' would have come around and that the South had little chance to win." Is Foote accurate here in this regard or were there enough chances for the Rebels to win given the battles that they were able to win?

I think if the South had attempted to actually sieze Union territory, then the Union would have been inspired to greater efforts. I think if the South had managed to stabilize things in 1863 (not losing at Gettysburg/Vicksburg) then a kind of Truce might have been possible, probably with European mediation. This was one of Lee's strategic objectives during the Invasion of Pennsylvania.

7. West Virginia became a state during the war, which as we know were 63 counties of "Old" Virginia that left the Confederacy to join (or more accurately re-join) the Union. As a rank amateur historian, I would think this would have been a very significant point in the war, where one half of a southern state breaks away and forms its own state and that state joins the Union, but it isn't. Why?

That part of Virginia fell under Union control early on and never played a part in the rebellion. Western Virgnia didn't contribute much to the rest of Virginia and wasn't missed much.

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn’t he also the first black ambassador to a foreign country (Haiti)?

8. Around this time was Lee's campaign to march north, which would lead to the eventual battle at Gettysburg. Would it have been much effective for the Rebels to take Maryland, making sure they fall to the Rebels rather than to go that far north?

Maryland was divided. The eastern shore supported the Southern cause and the western part, where Lee was marching around, was solidly Unionist. He would have been occupying that part of Maryland rather than liberating it, and he didn't have the men for that.

Good questions. I'll bite.

The "Black Republicans" were seen as a threat to the foundation of Southern society. And no, it wasn't limited government or states rights. If that were the case the GOP would also done poorly in Western states as well (and big government Whigs wouldn't have done so well in some slave states in the 1840s either). So yes, they "had it in" for whoever the Republican nominee would be.

John Brown did a lot to shape the mood of the slave states in 1859 and 1860. You can attribute a lot of the anxiety and tension to the fear of slave revolt. But if Brown had never lived and a Republican were elected in 1860, would the big picture -- secession of at least a few states and likely war -- really have been any different? He may have mattered in the Upper South, but South Carolina didn't need John Brown to make them afraid of slave revolts, abolitionists, and Republicans, or hostile to Northerners.

Frederick Douglass wasn't seen as a major figure until recently. Whether we're right or wrong in giving him such significance is something we could discuss, but I don't think many Americans knew who he was until the 1960s. That may have been different in his own day, but surely William Lloyd Garrison would have been more familiar to contemporaries.

Lincoln met with Douglass during the war, but there was no outcry as there was when later Presidents conferred with Black leaders (like when Theodore Roosevelt invited Booker T. Washington to the White House). Was that because people didn't know Lincoln had met with Douglass, or because they didn't know who Douglass was, or was the wartime climate different from what we might have expected?

The West was so lightly settled in those days, that it's hard to imagine the Confederacy "moving into" it in any large numbers. If there'd been railroads or waterways or more settlements things would have been different, but as it was whatever manpower they could commit to it would only be a drop in the bucket, and that drop would dry up soon enough.

If the CSA could have gotten Southerners who'd settled on the West Coast to form guerilla units or even kept the war going in the Southwest, it certainly would have changed the shape of the war, though. Wikipedia tells me that 13 Union troops faced 10 Confederates at Picacho Pass. That may be an important part of Arizona history, but in terms of the war it looks like the smallest of sideshows.

McClellan did take the battle to the gates of Richmond and Lee did suffer major losses fighting him. However competent Mac was or wasn't, however much he dawdled and delayed, the fact that he did mount the Peninsular Campaign does have to be taken into account. Also, with Burnside and Hooker in the running, McClellan wouldn't be the least competent Union commander.

The conventional wisdom is that victories in the Atlanta, Mobile, and Shenandoah campaigns won Lincoln the election. Outside of New York state, Lincoln carried cities by a large margin (except for Detroit and Milwaukee). Democrats had trouble finding a candidate who wouldn't have been seen as disloyal or a Copperhead, but if the military situation hadn't taken that upturn the election would have been a lot closer, especially in the cities.

I don't know about Shelby Foote's comment. To be sure, the South used more of its free manpower than the North did. There were a lot more Northerners who didn't fight than there were Southerners, but there was probably a breaking point as well: if it didn't look like the war was being won, Northerners might turn against it as the government tried to commit more resources to it.

ping

9. What are we to make of George McClellan (sic)? I've seen on previous threads that Hood and Bragg weren't the most competent on the Rebel side, can that assertion also be made of McClellan?

When it comes to army commanders, it's hard to find a confederate general worse than Bragg or Hood. There were a whole lot of Union generals who were more inept than McClellan. McClellan was great at organizing, wonderful at planning, and bad at execution. He seemed always more concerned about not losing than he was about winning.

This war would NOT have lasted into the 20th Century, because the preponderance of Northern industrial might (which effectively won the first time) would still be relevant.

I just re-watched this series a few weeks ago. One statement really struck me this time around. Shelby Foote stated that the Union won the war "without really trying." He stated the Union had vast resources that it didn't even use during war and that the lives of the Northerners weren't really affected at all by the war effort. The only sacrifice that the citizens of the North made was their young men (which, of course, isn't to be minimized).

"slaves...fight"

It should be added that late in the war both Lee and General Patrick Cleburne advocated freeing slaves if they fought for the Congederacy. Cleburne supposedly said that the Confederacy was eventually going to have to free all the slaves anyway. Lee had already freed all his slaves and thought slavery wrong. But the general's suggestions were rejected by the Confederate government.

10. Assume for a moment that Pickett's charge at Gettysburg works and the Rebels win there. Would it be entirely possible to have seen a major battle and possible bloodbath in Philadelphia or Baltimore? (Something that would have possibly dwarfed the casualties and deaths at Shiloh, Antietam, etc.?)

Extremely doubful. Even if Lee had won, he was hundreds of miles from home, had thousands of casualties to care for, and had just shot off most of his ammunition. He had no choice but to return South, win or lose.