Posted on 05/23/2002 8:52:25 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
The New York Review of Books
June 13, 2002
Look Away! A History of the Confederate States of America
by William C. Davis
The South vs. the South: How Anti-Confederate Southerners Shaped the Course of the Civil War
by William W. Freehling
Lee and His Army in Confederate History
by Gary W. Gallagher
The War Hits Home: The Civil War in Southeastern Virginia
by Brian Steel Wills
The field of Civil War history has produced more interpretative disputes than most historical events. Next to debates about the causes of the war, arguments about why the North won, or why the Confederacy lost (the difference in phraseology is significant), have generated some of the most heated but also most enlightening recent scholarship. The titles of four books reveal just some of the central themes of this argument: Why the North Won the Civil War (1960); How the North Won (1983); Why the South Lost the Civil War (1986); Why the Confederacy Lost (1992).
Answers to these why and how questions fall into two general categories: external and internal. Exter-nal interpretations usually phrase the question as Why did the North win? They focus on a comparison of Northern and Southern population, resources, economic capacity, leadership, or strategy, and conclude that Northern superiority in one or more of these explains Union victory. Internal explanations tend to ask, Why did the South lose? They focus mainly or entirely on the Confederacy and argue that internal divisions, dissensions, or inadequacies account for Confederate defeat.
The most durable interpretation is an external one. It was offered by General Robert E. Lee himself in a farewell address to his army after its surrender at Appomattox: "The Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources."[1] This explanation enabled Southern whites to preserve their pride, to reconcile defeat with their sense of honor, even to maintain faith in the nobility of their cause while admitting that it had been lost. The Confederacy, in other words, was compelled to surrender not because its soldiers fought badly, or lacked courage, or suffered from poor leadership, or because its cause was wrong, but simply because the enemy had more men and guns. The South did not lose; Confederates wore themselves out whipping the Yankees and collapsed from glorious exhaustion. This interpretation became the mainstay of what has been called the Myth of the Lost Cause, which has sustained Southern pride in their Confederate forebears to this day. As one Virginian expressed it:
They never whipped us, Sir, unless they were four to one. If we had had anything like a fair chance, or less disparity of numbers, we should have won our cause and established our independence.[2]
In one form or another, this explanation has won support from scholars of Northern as well as Southern birth. In 1960 the historian Richard Current provided a succinct version of it. After reviewing the statistics of the North's "overwhelming numbers and resources" two and a half times the South's population, three times its railroad capacity, nine times its industrial production, and so on Current concluded that "surely, in view of the disparity of resources, it would have taken a miracle...to enable the South to win. As usual, God was on the side of the heaviest battalions."[3]
In 1990 Shelby Foote expressed this thesis in his inimitable fashion. Noting that many aspects of life in the North went on much as usual during the Civil War, Foote told Ken Burns on camera in the PBS documentary The Civil War that "the North fought that war with one hand behind its back." If necessary "the North simply would have brought that other arm out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that war."[4]
At first glance, Current's and Foote's statements seem plausible. But upon reflection, a good many historians have questioned their explicit assertions that overwhelming numbers and resources made Northern victory inevitable. If that is true, the Confederate leaders who took their people to war in 1861 were guilty of criminal folly or colossal arrogance. They had read the census returns. They knew as much about the North's superiority in men, resources, and economic capacity as any modern historian. Yet they went to war confident of victory. Southern leaders were students of history. They could cite many examples of small nations that won or defended their independence against much more powerful enemies: Switzerland against the Hapsburg Empire; the Netherlands against Spain; Greece against the Ottomans. Their own ancestors had won independence from mighty Britain in 1783. The relative resources of the Confederacy vis-à-vis the Union in 1861 were greater than those of these other successful rebels.
The Confederacy waged a strategically defensive war to protect from conquest territory it already controlled and to preserve its armies from annihilation. To "win" that kind of war, the Confederacy did not need to invade and conquer the North or destroy its army and infrastructure; it needed only to hold out long enough to compel the North to the conclusion that the price of conquering the South and annihilating its armies was too great, as Britain had concluded with respect to the United States in 1781 or, for that matter, as the United States concluded with respect to Vietnam in 1972. Until 1865, cold-eyed military experts in Europe were almost unanimous in their conviction that Union armies could never conquer and subdue the 750,000 square miles of the Confederacy, as large as all of Western Europe. "No war of independence ever terminated unsuccessfully except where the disparity of force was far greater than it is in this case," pronounced the military analyst of the London Times in 1862. "Just as England during the revolution had to give up conquering the colonies so the North will have to give up conquering the South."[5]
Even after losing the war, many ex-Confederates stuck to this belief. General Joseph E. Johnston, one of the highest-ranking Confederate officers, insisted in 1874 that the Southern people had not been "guilty of the high crime of undertaking a war without the means of waging it successfully."[6] A decade later General Pierre G.T. Beauregard, who ranked just below Johnston, made the same point: "No people ever warred for independence with more relative advantages than the Confederates."[7]
If so, why did they lose the war? In thinly veiled terms, Johnston and Beauregard blamed the inept leadership of Jefferson Davis. That harried gentleman responded in kind; as far as he was concerned, the erratic and inadequate generalship of Beauregard and especially Johnston was responsible for Confederate defeat. In the eyes of many contemporaries and historians there was plenty of blame to go around. William C. Davis's Look Away! is the most recent "internal" study of the Confederacy that, by implication at least, attributes Confederate defeat to poor leadership at several levels, both military and civilian, as well as factionalism, dissension, and bickering between men with outsize egos and thin skins. In this version of Confederate history, only Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson remain unstained.
For any believer in the Myth of the Lost Cause, any admirer of heroic Confederate resistance to overwhelming odds, the story told by Davis (no relation to the Confederate president) makes depressing reading. It is a story of conflicts not on the battlefields of Manassas or Shiloh or Gettysburg or Chickamauga or the Wilderness they are here, but offstage, as it were but conflicts between state governors and the Confederate government in Richmond, between quarreling Cabinet officers, between Jefferson Davis and prominent generals or senators or newspaper editors and even his vice-president, Alexander Stephens. Davis chronicles different examples of internal breakdown under the stresses not only of enemy invasion but also of slave defections to the Yankees, of Unionist disloyalty in the upcountry, particularly in such states as Tennessee, of galloping inflation and the inability of an unbalanced agricultural society under siege to control it, of shortages and hunger and a growing bitterness and alienation among large elements of the population.
These problems seemed more than sufficient to ensure Confederate failure, but they were greatly exacerbated by the jealousies and rivalries of Confederate politicians, which remain Davis's principal focus. He does not explicitly address the question of why the Confederacy lost, but his implicit answer lies in the assertion that "the fundamental flaw in too many of the big men of the Confederacy... [was] 'big-man-me-ism.'"
There are, however, two problems with this interpretation. In two senses it is too "internal." First, by concentrating only on the Confederacy it tends to leave the reader with the impression that only the Confederacy suffered from these corrosive rivalries, jealousies, and dissensions. But a history of the North during the Civil War would reveal similar problems, mitigated only by Lincoln's skill in holding together a diverse coalition of Republicans and War Democrats, Yankees and border states, abolitionists and slaveholders which perhaps suggests that Lincoln was the principal reason for Union victory. In any event, Look Away! is also too "internal" because the author is too deeply dependent on his sources. It is the nature of newspaper editorials, private correspondence, congressional debates, partisan speeches, and the like to emphasize conflict, criticism, argument, complaint. It is the squeaky wheel that squeaks. The historian needs to step back and gain some perspective on these sources, to recognize that the well-greased wheel that turns smoothly also turns quietly, leaving less evidence of its existence available to the historian.
Look Away! falls within one tradition of internal explanations for Confederate defeat. More prevalent, especially in recent years, have been studies that emphasize divisions and conflicts of race, class, and even gender in the South. Two fifths of the Confederate population were slaves, and two thirds of the whites did not belong to slaveholding families. What stake did they have in an independent Confederate nation whose original raison d'être was the protection of slavery? Not much stake at all, according to many historians, especially for the slaves and, as the war took an increasing toll on non-slaveholding white families, very little stake for them either. Even among slaveholding families, the women who willingly subscribed to an ethic of sacrifice in the war's early years became disillusioned as the lengthening war robbed them of husbands, sons, lovers, and brothers. Many white women turned against the war and spread this disaffection among their menfolk in the army; in the end, according to Drew Gilpin Faust, "it may well have been because of its women that the South lost the Civil War."[8]
If all this is true if the slaves and some nonslaveholding whites opposed the Confederate war effort from the outset and others including women of slaveholding families eventually turned against it, one need look no further to explain Confederate defeat. In The South vs. the South, however, William W. Freehling does not go this far. He says almost nothing about women as a separate category, and he acknowledges that many nonslaveholding whites had a racial, cultural, and even economic stake in the preservation of slavery and remained loyal Confederates to the end. But he maintains that, properly defined, half of all Southerners opposed the Confederacy and that this fact provides a sufficient explanation for Confederate failure.
Freehling defines the South as all fifteen slave states and Southerners as all people slave as well as free who lived in those states. This distinction between "the South" and the eleven slave states that formed the Confederacy is important but too often disregarded by those who casually conflate the South and the Confederacy. Admittedly, some 90,000 white men from the four Union slave states (Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware) fought for the Confederacy, but this number was offset by a similar number of whites from Confederate states (chiefly Tennessee and the part of Virginia that became West Virginia) who fought for the Union.
But Freehling's central thesis that "white Confederates were only half the Southerners" raises problems. This arithmetic works only if virtually all black Southerners are counted against the Confederacy. At times Freehling seems to argue that they should be so counted. At other times he is more cautious, maintaining that "the vast majority" of Southern blacks "either opposed the rebel cause or cared not whether it lived or died." Freehling does not make clear how important he considers that qualifying "or cared not." In any event, let us assume that all three million slaves who remained in the Confederacy (as well as the one million in the border states and in conquered Confederate regions) sympathized with the Union cause that would bring them freedom. Nevertheless, their unwilling labor as slaves was crucial to the Confederate economy and war effort, just as their unwilling labor and that of their forebears had been crucial to building the antebellum Southern economy. These Confederate slaves worked less efficiently than before the war because so many masters and overseers were absent at the front. Unwilling or not, however, they must be counted on the Confederate side of the equation, which significantly alters Freehling's 50/50 split of pro- and anti-Confederates in the South to something like 75/25.
Freehling draws on previous scholarship to offer a succinct narrative of the political and military course of the war, organized around Lincoln's slow but inexorable steps toward emancipation, "hard war," and the eventual mobilization of 300,000 black laborers and soldiers to work and fight for the Union. This narrative is marred by several errors, including the repeated confusion of General Charles F. Smith with General William F. "Baldy" Smith, the conflation of combat casualties with combat mortality, the mislabeling of a photograph of Confederate trenches at Fredericksburg as Petersburg, and the acceptance at face value of Alexander Stephens's absurd claim, made five years after Lincoln's death, that the Union president had urged him in 1865 to persuade Southern states to ratify the Thirteenth Amendment "prospectively," thereby delaying the abolition of slavery five years. Nevertheless, Freehling has made a strong case for the vital contribution of the two million whites and one million blacks in the South who definitely did support the Union cause. Without them, "the North" could not have prevailed, as Lincoln readily acknowledged.
Freehling does not take a clear stand on the question of whether Union victory was inevitable. At times he seems to imply that it was, because the half of all Southerners whom he claims supported the Union (actively or passively) doomed the Confederacy. But at other times he suggests that this support was contingent on the outcome of military campaigns and political decisions. No such ambiguity characterizes the essays in Gary Gallagher's Lee and His Army in Confederate History. In this book and in his earlier The Confederate War, Gallagher has argued forcefully and convincingly that Confederate nationalism bound most Southern whites together in determined support for the Confederate cause, that the brilliant though costly victories of Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia reinforced this determination, and that morale even in the face of defeat and the destruction of resources in 1864 1865 remained high until almost the end.
Gallagher does not slight the problems of slave defections to the Yankees, class tensions among whites, personal rivalries and jealousies among Confederate leaders, and other internal divisions that have occupied historians who see these problems as preordaining defeat. But he emphasizes the degree of white unity and strength of purpose despite these faultlines. Plenty of evidence exists to support this emphasis. A Union officer who was captured at the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864, and spent the rest of the war in Southern prisons wrote in his diary on October 4 that from what he had seen in the South "the End of the War...is some time hence as the Idea of the Rebs giving up until they are completely subdued is all Moonshine they submit to privatations that would not be believed unless seen."[9]
"Until they are completely subdued." That point came in April 1865, when the large and well-equipped Union armies finally brought the starving, barefoot, and decimated ranks of Confederates to bay. Gallagher revives the overwhelming numbers and resources explanation for Confederate defeat, shorn of its false aura of inevitability. Numbers and resources do not prevail in war without the will and skill to use them. The Northern will wavered several times, most notably in response to Lee's victories in the summer of 1862 and winter spring of 1863 and the success of Lee's resistance to Grant's offensives in the spring and summer of 1864. Yet Union leaders and armies were learning the skills needed to win, and each time the Confederacy seemed on the edge of triumph, Northern victories blunted the Southern momentum: at Sharpsburg, Maryland, and Perryville, Kentucky, in the fall of 1862; at Gettysburg and Vicksburg in July 1863; and at Atlanta and in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley in September 1864. Better than any other historian of the Confederacy, Gallagher understands the importance of these contingent turning points that eventually made it possible for superior numbers and resources to prevail. He understands as well that the Confederate story cannot be written except in counterpoint with the Union story, and that because of the multiple contingencies in these stories, Northern victory was anything but inevitable.
Much of the best scholarship on the Civil War during the past decade has concentrated on the local or regional impact of the war. A fine example is Brian Steel Wills's The War Hits Home, a fascinating account of the home front and battle front in southeastern Virginia, especially the town of Suffolk and its hinterland just inland from Norfolk. No great battles took place here, but there was plenty of skirmishing and raids by combatants on both sides. Confederates controlled this region until May 1862, when they were compelled to pull back their defenses to Richmond. Union forces occupied Suffolk for the next year, staving off a halfhearted Confederate effort to recapture it in the spring of 1863. The Yankees subsequently fell back to a more defensible line nearer Norfolk, leaving the Suffolk region a sort of no man's land subject to raids and plundering by the cavalry of both armies.
Through it all most white inhabitants remained committed Confederates, while many of the slaves who were not removed by their owners to safer territory absconded to the Yankees, adding their weight to the Union side of the scales in the balance of power discussed by Freehling. White men from this region fought in several of Lee's regiments, suffering casualties that left many a household bereft of sons, husbands, fathers. Yet their Confederate loyalties scarcely wavered.
Northern occupation forces at first tried a policy of conciliation, hoping to win the Southern whites back to the Union. When this failed, they moved toward a harsher policy here as they did elsewhere, confiscating the property and liberating the slaves of people they now perceived as enemies to be crushed rather than deluded victims of secession conspirators to be converted.
Wills does not make a big point of it, but his findings stand "in sharp rebuttal" to the arguments of historians who portray a weak or divided white commitment to the Confederate cause as the reason for defeat. "These people sought to secure victory until there was no victory left to win." In the end the North did have greater numbers and resources, wielded with a skill and determination that by 1864 1865 matched the Confederacy's skills and determination; and these explain why the North won the Civil War.
[1] The Wartime Papers of R.E. Lee, edited by Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin (Little, Brown, 1961), p. 934.
[2] Quoted in Why the North Won the Civil War, edited by David Donald (Louisiana State University Press, 1960), p. ix.
[3] Richard N. Current, "God and the Strongest Battalions," in Why the North Won the Civil War, p. 22.
[4] "Men at War: An Interview with Shelby Foote," in Geoffrey C. Ward with Ric Burns and Ken Burns, The Civil War (Knopf, 1990), p. 272.
[5] London Times, August 29, 1862.
[6] Joseph E. Johnston, Narrative of Military Operations (Appleton, 1874), p. 421.
[7] Pierre G.T. Beauregard, "The First Battle of Bull Run," in Battles and Leaders of the Civil War, 4 volumes, edited by Robert U. Johnson and Clarence C. Buel (Century, 1887), Vol. 1, p. 222.
[8] Drew Gilpin Faust, "Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War," The Journal of American History, Vol. 76, No. 4 (March 1990), p. 1228.
[9] "The Civil War Diary of Colonel John Henry Smith," edited by David M. Smith, Iowa Journal of History, Vol. 47 (April 1949), p. 164.
RETALIATION (From the Richmond Inquirer, Jan. 22 [1864])
The following is a copy of the letter sent to Gen. Wilde by the colonel commanding the forces on the Blackwater, relative to the late measures of retaliation adopted by our military authorities in Eastern North Carolina:
Headquarters Forces on Blackwater Franklin, Va, January 1864
Gen. Wilde, commanding Colored Brigade, Norfolk, Va. Sir – Probably no expedition, during the progress of this war, has been attended with more utter disregard for the long-established usages of civilization or the dictates of humanity, than was your late raid into the country bordering the Albemarle. Your stay, though short, was marked by crimes and enormities. You burned houses over the heads of defenseless women and children, carried off private property of every description, arrested non-combatants, and carried off ladies in irons, whom you confined with negro men. Your negro troops fired on Confederates after they surrendered, and they were only saved by the exertions of the more humane of your white officers. Last, but not least, under the pretext that he was a guerrilla, you hanged Daniel Bright, a private of Company L, 62d Georgia Regiment (cavalry), forcing the ladies and gentlemen whom you held in arrest to witness the execution. Therefore, I have obtained an order from the general commanding for the execution of Samuel Jones, a private of Company B, 5th Ohio, whom I hang in retaliation. I hold two more of your men -in irons- as hostages for Mrs. Weeks and Mrs. Mundin. When these ladies are released, these men will be relieved and treated as prisoners of war.
Col. Joel R. Griffin
Now the next report. RETALIATION The following is from the Richmond Examiner of the 12th. It will be recollected that some weeks ago a Georgia cavalryman, Daniel Bright, of the 22d Georgia, was hanged by the Federals as a guerrilla. It now appears that retaliation has been sternly executed by our troops. We learned that, at the spot of the tragic execution, a few days ago, our soldiers hung in retaliation, a negro soldier from Ohio, and that his body was left swinging on the very beam from which Bright was suspended. The victim was a bright mulatto; he had been captured near Elizabeth City, and he must have been brought nearly seventy miles to the place of execution, that the retaliation might be executed on the very same spot where the atrocity which occasioned it had been committed. Our informant saw the corpse swinging in the wind at Hampton Cross-roads. The following label was attached to it: NOTICE – Here hangs the body of Sam Jones, of the 5th Ohio Regiment, executed in retaliation for Daniel Bright, hung in retaliation, hung by the order of Brig. Gen. Wild. By order of GEN. PICKETT. We have, also, information on the hanging of another free negro soldier, the day before yesterday, by our troops, at Franklin. He was executed for burning houses. The wretch belonged to a Massachusetts regiment. He is said to have been much affected by his fate, protesting that he never had any idea of such consequences of his enlistment. In addition to these fearful and determined acts of retaliation, we learn that two hostages were yesterday committed to Castle Thunder, under the orders of Col. Griffin – one white man; and the other a bright mulatto; and they will be held to await the threat of Gen. Getty, who commands at Portsmouth, to hang two women, who are already in irons, in retaliation for the execution of the negro Jones. The first? [the word is hard to read] seems to have gone forth for stern and terrible work on the North Carolina frontier, in this dark and melancholy of swamps, overrun with negro banditti, and now the special theater of war’s vengeance. Our informant states that Capt. Maffit, of Burrough’s Battalion, had recently come out from Princess Anne county and joined Col. Griffin’s command; and he is entirely certain from what he heard from our officers that seven of Maffit’s men, taken by the enemy, were hung.
From what I could find on the web, Burrough’s Battalion fought with other regular Confederate Army units under the command of Confederate officers. I don’t know whether it was a state unit or a regular army unit.
Gen. Wilde (or 'Wild', his name is spelled both ways in reports) issued a warning that he considered the NC state troops to be guerrillas even though they were paid by the state to defend their home counties. I'm not sure he had the legal or moral authority to do that. If he hung NC state troops, how is he any different from Pickett?
A special committee was formed by the Confederates to investigate outrages committed by the Federals. They reported that Daniel Bright, a citizen of Pasquotank County, was taken from his residence and hanged and that two most respectable married ladies were taken as hostages for a negro soldier captured by the Confederates. They report Bright was hanged close to his home a few miles from Elizabeth City. I don’t have the date on this committee investigation other than 1864.
That seems at odds with the newspaper report above that mentions that Bright was hung some 70 miles from Elizabeth City. Perhaps there were two hangings by Union troops, one of a local near Elizabeth City and one of a Georgia soldier 70 miles away. Perhaps the names of the hung were the same or similar, or just reported in error. It’s hard to tell through the mists of time.
Union Gen. John Peck corresponded with Gen. Pickett about yet another hanging. He sent a copy of a Richmond Examiner article to Pickett concerning the hanging of a Union negro soldier who had shot and killed a Confederate colonel. He enclosed a copy of Lincoln’s order stating that a rebel soldier would be executed for each Union soldier killed in violation of the rules of war.
Pickett replied that the news story was a fabrication. He then went on to say that “had I caught any negro who had killed either officer, soldier, or citizen of the Confederate States, I should have caused him to be immediately executed.”
In response to Peck’s threat to hang a Confederate soldier, Pickett says, “I have merely to say, that I have in my hands, and subject to my orders, captured in the recent operations in this department, some four hundred and fifty officers and men of the United States army, and for every man you hang, I will hang ten of the United States army.”
This is similar to Union escalations of the number of Confederates to be killed for each Union man killed in Kentucky (I think it was Kentucky, I have a contemporary newspaper report of it somewhere).
However, you are right in your idea that Davis was fatally wrong for his position, particularly in his dealings with Lee. Lee was by nature an aggressive fighter, though also a fine defensive tactician, and had he been under a president commited to aggressive warfare, he perhaps would have crushed the Union armies. However, Davis lacked the will to decide between a defensive war and an aggressive war- he tried to play both cards, and it hardly worked. At times he instated aggressive commanders when the precise opposite was needed- witness his replacement of Johnson with Hood. He rarely recognized the capabilities of his generals, and often neglected them at prime opportunities.
Personally, I find the methods of N.B. Forrest to be some of the finest implemented by the Confederacy, considering their situation. Forrest was capable of excellent defense, holding eastern Mississippi and Alabama quite well until 1865, and conducting swift and well-executed raids upon enemy position in occupied states. He operated with fairly minimal numbers and was usually very under-armed, yet, even when opperating against vastly superior numbers he tended to hold the upper hand and rarely lost a battle, or suffered heavy losses (there were exceptions, of course, the most notable- and perhaps embarrasing- at Parker's Crossroads, TN). Had he been given greater liberty to strike at, say, Sherman's line of supply, the results for the Confederacy would have been excellent.
Since 1865, perhaps, but not before.
Clause 1: Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
The one good thing that can be attributed to Butler, and is even acknowledged at the Confederate Museum in New Orleans, is that he caused significant improvement in public sanitation, which apparently had been pretty abysmal. In this connection, it is amusing to note that the citizens of New Orleans honored him for his overall contributions by having his picture in the bottom of their chamber-pots.
I found the following contemporary Southern newspaper report on Olustee.
"We learn from a dispatch to the Savannah Republican that the Federals have abandoned their position on the St. Mary's River and taken to the protection of their fleet. Our loss in the late battle was thirty-five killed and from 700 to 800 wounded. The enemy's loss was between 2500 and 3000."
"The enemy's force is reported to have been 10,000 men of all arms. Our force was about 3500 to 4000. The enemy placed two of their negro regiments in the front and urged them on at the point of the bayonet. They withstood our fire at a distance, but as our troops advanced they retreated. More than one half of the two negro regiments are said to have been left on the field of battle."
Keep in mind that was from a Southern newspaper. I also found some after-battle official reports by participants on the web. I gather a Federal general (Hatch) many months after the battle thought wounded negro troops must have been killed after the battle because there were so few negros among the prisoners in the Confederate General's report. He stated it was known that many wounded negroes were killed on the battlefield, but provides no evidence other than the low number of negro prisoners.
Confederate Gen. Finegan in his report to headquarters said that he had only 3 negro prisoners out of 150 total prisoners (later amended to near 200), but he reported a large number of negroes among the captured wounded (number of negroes not given, but the total captured wounded was 418).
US Col. Langdon's official report states: "I saw many wounded colored soldiers appearing suddenly in front and on my left, without muskets, and it appeared as if they had been lying down and taken the first opportunity to get to the rear. Some of the infantry, while facing the enemy and firing wildly, did not show fear, nor did I see any of them absolutely run off, but groups of them huddled together and did nothing, and many were in this position shot, while they seemed unconscious that they were hit."
From US Capt. Hamilton's official report: "The left wing of the U.S. Colored Infantry could have done little injury to the enemy; they fired very wildly and without purpose. It was not from cowardice as much as ignorance. Their officers appeared to do their duty as brave men, but without self-reliance, and I did not see any of the regiment run, yet they only served the purpose of keeping the enemy in check from charging. They should not be condemned, for I saw nothing wrong that could not be accounted for by want of experience and ignorance of object, apparently."
If the negro troops were the front troops in the Federal advance and later simply huddled on the battleground confused, it is not surprising that a high percentage of them were wounded. Maybe they didn't know what to do. Col. Langdon did not say the negro troops had surrendered or that firing from Confederates was unjust.
Perhaps you could point me to some other references. I don't doubt that some negroes may have been killed after the battle, but I didn't find support for it.
It was Sumter that quickened the North's anger and strengthened its resolve.
Gettysburg and Antietam did help to bolster flagging Union determination, but so did Vicksburg, Mobile and Atlanta. Victory over an invader was better for morale than victory in enemy territory, but it's victory that was most important. Had Lee won at Gettysburg, would that have increased Northern determination?
Lee's aggressive tactics and willingness to incur losses hurt his side, but these were as much in evidence on his own territory as in enemy country.
You could make a case against those tactics and argue that a far more defensive style of war more focused on avoiding losses would have served the Confederacy better.
In defense of Lee, his way of fighting was intended to offset Confederate losses in the West, to rouse failing morale, and to convince outsiders that the Confederacy had become a viable nation. He was looking for the master stroke, perhaps because fatalism convinced him that Northern numbers and industry would otherwise prevail.
And flushed by some of their victories in the East, "writing off" the border states and territories was something Confederate leaders would not do. In some very real ways, we are talking about a revolution and an empire when we talk about the Confederacy. It's only in retrospect that its victim status predominates.
So yes, Lee could have behaved differently and perhaps have succeeded over time, but only if the Confederacy had had good enough commanders in the West -- which they didn't have. If rebel commanders in the West had prevented their domain from being divided, a more conservative strategy could also have been pursued in the East, and perhaps over time Unionists would have grown weary with the long war.
**********
The war must have seemed very strange and absurd to many Americans before the horror sank in. In so many ways we were clearly one country then, perhaps more so than we are today. Of course had the Confederacy succeeded we would see things differently. But for Americans living before or after the conflict it would have seemed inconceivable or inexplicable. Those who tell us that leaving slavery out of the picture makes things clearer are wrong, as it makes secession and war so much more incomprehensible.
The idea of the rebellion as a libertarian revolt may jibe with current political preoccupations, but how valid is it? Would putting what would probably be an armed and fortified international border on the Potomac or the Ohio or the Mason-Dixon line lessen the role of government in American life?
General Lee, when he was appointed the Commander in Chief of the Confederate Army, realized what he was up against, and knew that the best course of action was to fight the war in the South, and to not go on the offensive immediately.
This actually was met with success at the war's onset, and had they continued with this plan of action, should have won.
And your 'ancestors' were all sweetness and light? As to who is 'collaberating' with the thought control 'fascists' you should check out the campus anti-Lincoln propaganda. The same rash of BS that DiLorenzo peddles. The libitarians, and the left have merged in their anti-Americanism.
Levying War against her, or adhering to her Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.
So yes, General Thomas and General Lee's nephew would appear to have been guilty of treason. General Lee, on the other hand, properly recognized that his first duty of citizenship was to his home state.
Sorry. I typed the newspaper's words in incorrectly. It should read: "NOTICE – Here hangs the body of Sam Jones, of the 5th Ohio Regiment, executed in retaliation for Daniel Bright, hung by the order of Brig. Gen. Wild. By order of GEN. PICKETT."
Did even Thoreau realized that the war was being fought to replace one kind of slavery with another? And the Yankee crony-capitalists' ever-growing Leviathan state has been taking it's revenge on the new "slaves" ever since.
Probably something the likes of you would be proud of.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.