Shades of Blue and Gray

An Introductory Military History of the Civil War

Herman Hattaway

• Publisher: University of Missouri
• Year: 2013
• Print ISBN: 9780826211071
• eBook ISBN: 9780826260734
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

An introductory military history of the American Civil War, Shades of Blue and Gray places the 1861-1865 conflict within the broad context of evolving warfare. Emphasizing technology and its significant impact, Hattaway includes valuable material on land and sea mines, minesweepers, hand grenades, automatic weapons, the Confederate submarine, and balloons. The evolution of professionalism in the American military serves as an important connective theme throughout. Hattaway extrapolates from recent works by revisionists William Skelton and Roy Roberts to illustrate convincingly that the development of military professionalism is not entirely a post-Civil War phenomenon.

The author also incorporates into his work important new findings of recent scholars such as Albert Castel (on the Atlanta Campaign), Reid Mitchell (on soldiers' motivation), Mark Grimsley (on "hard war"), Brooks D. Simpson (on Ulysses S. Grant), and Lauren Cook Burgess (on women who served as soldiers, disguised as men). In addition, Hattaway comments on some of the best fiction and nonfiction available in his recommended reading lists, which will both enlighten and motivate readers.

Informative and clearly written, enhanced by graceful prose and colorful anecdotes, Shades of Blue and Gray will appeal to all general readers.

PART I

Background and Opening Phases of the American Civil War

What caused the American Civil War is an enormously complex and sometimes controversial subject (or matrix of subjects); much has been written on the matter. The final three-step process that brought the war about was this: (1) Beginning late in 1860 and continuing in early 1861, seven Southern states left the Union, soon to form a new national government—the Confederate States of America—and on April 12–14, 1861, they bombarded and seized a U.S. Army post, Fort Sumter, in Charleston Harbor, South Carolina. (2) Under the potent leadership of the great nationalist, President Abraham Lincoln, the Union proved determined to fight a war to force the seven seceded states to return. (3) Led by the Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, the seven seceded states (which were joined, soon after Lincoln's virtual presidential declaration of war, by an additional four states) elected to fight in order to try to maintain their new allegiance.

Slavery, not the sole divisive issue to be sure, nor even the primary initial motivating factor for a great many of the war's participants, was nevertheless the ultimate essential cause of the war. If that unfortunate institution had not existed, compromises on the other matters could have been fashioned. It is ironic, though, that the burning and divisive issue in the years immediately preceding the war was not slavery itself but, rather, the question of whether or not the institution should be allowed to expand into new territory. Southerners believed that freedom to expand was an essential right; Northerners had come to feel more and more that it was absolutely crucial to prevent slavery's further spread.

Abraham Lincoln was not an abolitionist, but he was dedicated to the ultimate destruction of slavery because he adamantly opposed its further spread, and he (like many others) believed that stopping it from spreading would eventually bring its demise. Southerners regarded Lincoln and his ilk as “Black Republicans” and believed that his having captured the presidency in 1860 was a slap in the face that demanded retribution. For some years previous the so-called fire-eaters, Southern radicals, had urged disunion as the only viable way to protect Southern rights. But now the radicals' arguments made more sense to a wider audience, because Black Republican ascendancy had dishonored a people who made honor an essential part of their way of life.

The people of the eleven states that consummated the secession process (a process that they themselves asserted to be legal), and other combatants who supported their cause (some persons from the four slave states that remained in the Union—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri), fought in order to preserve the existing social and economic systems, as they perceived them, and they believed that state rights were essential to that preservation. But whether there were or were not distinct cultures, large enough segments of the population in each section deeply believed that theirs was indeed a distinct and superior way of life and that their way of life was profoundly shaped by the presence or the absence of slavery.

Sentiments espoused by persons in the so-called border states and upper South were sorely divided. Tennessee, North Carolina, Arkansas, and Virginia would secede in the second wave. But western Virginia broke away, and in 1863 was admitted as a new state in the Union (a process made possible by the reality that Northern military control of the area had been established early in the war and continued to be maintained). Tennessee quite probably would have divided as Virginia had, but there the situation was reversed: in the eastern portion, where Unionist sentiment was strong, the Confederacy maintained control; in the western portion the Union gained early control, but the populace remained rabidly pro-Southern. Both the North and the South claimed Kentucky and Missouri, states in which the secession process began but was not completed. The Confederacy even had stars in its flag and representatives in its Congress from those two states.

Some historians have asserted that there existed very distinctly different Northern and Southern cultures. Grady McWhiney, sometimes in collaboration with Forest McDonald or Perry D. Jamieson, argues that Southerners by and large were Celtic while Northerners in essential part were Anglo-Saxon. Historians of religion, notably Samuel S. Hill Jr. and James H. Moorhead, have presented much evidence to show that differences between Northern and Southern religious denominations were sufficiently stark as to render the respective populace in each section fundamentally different—as well as to have some impact on the conduct of the war. Furthermore, C. C. Goen has shown the potent impact that the antebellum divisions in mainline Protestant Christian denominations had in paving the way for dividing the nation. And it is important to note that the American people of the mid-nineteenth century, Northerners and Southerners, were an intensely patriotic and fervently religious people. The Civil War ultimately became something of a holy struggle.

Whether or not there continues to exist enough will among a populace to protract an armed struggle is especially crucial in any civil war. And the South did try harder than the North; it made greater sacrifices. Ultimately, the Confederacy put at least 80 percent of its white men of military age into uniform, while the North mobilized roughly only about 50 percent of its potential soldiery. While both sides eventually resorted to conscription—the South did so a year earlier than the North—the majority of the troops were volunteers as a result of appeals to patriotism and pride as well as financial inducement. Some 80 percent of the Rebel soldiers were volunteers, and nearly 94 percent of the Yankees were volunteers.

In terms of population, and by almost any material measure, the North was vastly richer. But the Crimean War had illustrated to those with enough insight to perceive it that modern ordnance had rendered fighting forces relatively invulnerable to annihilation: they could hurt each other mightily, but the defense was too potent to be totally demolished. The weaker side could win in war—it merely had to hold out long enough; an uneven contest might gradually grind to an indecisive conclusion. Too, foreign intervention was a possibility (much expected by the South and much feared by the North). For the first year and a half of the war Southern hopes burned bright that England and perhaps France also would help them, but in the fall of 1862 those hopes began to fade, and—while they lingered long—they continued to diminish steadily.

Confederate President Jefferson Davis seemed to have understood clearly what the Confederacy's best course for ensuring its survival was when he indicated that the strategy of his government would be, as he put it, “defensive-offensive.” That is, they would primarily lie on the defensive and await whatever challenge the Union might put forward, but they would also take advantage of any propitious moment to strike offensively. (Perhaps as the war progressed they misread propitiousness. The Confederates attacked in fully one-half of the major battles, but when they did they suffered nearly twice as many casualties as when they defended.)

The first major formulation of Union strategy was proposed by the general in chief, Winfield Scott. Critics who were derisive of the strategy called it “the Anaconda Plan,” after the serpent that squeezes its prey slowly to death, but the name was apt and so it stuck. Scott proposed to put pressure on the entire periphery of the South and to use naval power to cut contact and support from the outside world. Next, Scott's plan called for dividing the Confederacy by seizing the Mississippi River. Then, he expected, pro-Union elements within the South would be induced to depose the revolutionary government. President Lincoln did not much like the plan, because he felt it would take too long to achieve desired results—if indeed such a plan as this could ever produce them at all. In the meantime, both the North and the South moved tentatively and uncertainly toward preparing for a war that, events would prove, leaders on both sides ill-perceived how unready they were to wage.

CHAPTER 1

Transition to Civil War

Procurement of Officers

Scholars who study the history of the U.S. Military Academy call the two decades prior to the Civil War the “Golden Age” of West Point. It was the time when the officer corps of the army changed from being composed primarily of men who had been commissioned directly from civilian life or who had risen from the ranks to one wherein professionally trained men predominated. Not one of the thirty-seven men who became general officers between 1802 and 1861 was an alumnus of the Academy, but even as early as 1833 more than half of the active officers were graduates, and their numbers had increased to more than 75 percent by 1860 on the eve of the Civil War.

When the country divided, 9,103,332 persons among the nation's total population of 31,443,321 lived in seceded states. So, too, did the cadet corps and the officer corps divide into similarly proportionally sized groups. At the war's outset, seventy-four Southern cadets resigned their appointments or suffered dismissal for refusing to take a required oath of allegiance, and all of those subsequently served in the Confederate army. A few Northerners chose to side with the South; and a few Southerners remained loyal to the North. Of the 266 Southern-born West Point alumni who fought in the Civil War, 39 (14.7 percent) served the Union.

For a variety of reasons, the South had a keener appreciation of military professionalism than the North did. Early in the Civil War the South did a better job than the North in identifying its more able officers and getting them sooner into high levels of command. More to the point is that the South—from the outset—was much more welcoming to its military professionals and capitalized upon their talents. Among the Regular Army officers who went to fight for the South, 64 percent became generals, while less than 30 percent of those Regulars who stayed with the Union did so.

Virtually none of the nonbrevet general-grade officers in the rather small pre-Civil War army could be expected to take the field. Winfield Scott, the general in chief, a Regular Army major general and brevet lieutenant general, was seventy-five years of age and physically unfit. Brig. Gen. John E. Wool, who was seventy-seven years old, ably handled an administrative command for a time and was promoted to major general on May 17, 1862, but diminished vigor forced him to retire on August 1, 1863. Seventy-two-year-old Brig. Gen. David E. Twiggs sided with the Confederacy.

Huge numbers of general- and field-grade officers had to be appointed from sources other than West Point; the importance and role played by the volunteer officers cannot be discounted. To be sure it was politics—and not their military capacity—that motivated some of their appointments. But some volunteer officers possessed genuine merit, and many of them productively strove to improve. Too, West Point had some meaningful competition as a source of sound formal military education, most notably from the Virginia Military Institute and the military college in Charleston, South Carolina, known as the Citadel.

Nevertheless, West Pointers—many of them still very young—dominated the key positions; the Civil War was a “West Pointers War.” Some of the Academy men performed poorly; only a very few proved adequate to the tasks of top command positions. It was in the lower-level commands and in staff positions that West Pointers—augmented by the best of the volunteer officers—truly excelled. Most significant, they succeeded in molding huge numbers of raw, unmilitary, young Americans into formidable soldiers, integrating them into well-functioning armies. The reality was demonstrated: modern wars can be conducted satisfactorily by armies that are largely nonprofessional if there exists an adequate professional core and if there is at least minimally sufficient time to mobilize and train.

Both sides started off with relative parity in administrative apparatus for command and control. Both had little technical information and few military maps. (A major western campaign in 1862 was conducted by a Confederate general who had bought his maps in a bookstore.) There was no staff school and no general-staff system. The Union had long used a regional military department system, and (with necessary modifications) this continued in existence throughout the Civil War. The Confederacy copied the idea; but, with the passage of time, the Confederate military department system came to have more impact on strategy than did the North's geographic arrangement, which remained more administrative in nature.

Enlisted Personnel

At the outbreak of the Civil War, the U.S. Army mustered just 16,367 men. On April 15, 1861, President Lincoln called up 75,000 militiamen for three months. Three weeks later by executive fiat he increased the Regular Army by 22,714 men and the navy by 18,000. Over the next four years, the Union ultimately mobilized 2.6 million men.

The Confederacy, meanwhile, also mobilizing, had even farther to go. (It was long believed, due to a misstatement by Emory Upton in his postwar writings, that only twenty-six enlisted men from the U.S. Army joined the Confederate forces. Actually, at least seventy enlisted individuals changed from North to South early in the war, and the full number of such deserters eventually approached four hundred.) The Confederate Congress had authorized the muster for a period of one year of as many volunteers as President Davis desired, and on March 6 he called for 100,000. The Confederacy ultimately mobilized close to 1 million men.

Initially, many recruits flocked to the training camps of both sides; but two particularly critical periods eventually rendered reenlistment a vital problem for both sides. First, early in the war, even before any real fighting had taken place, because many of the initial enlistments were for very short periods—usually for three months—the necessity arose to institute drastic change. Troops thereafter were typically enlisted for three years or for the war's duration, whichever came first. Thus, if the war was still dragging on, sometime in 1864 there would come a crucial period when vast numbers of soldiers' terms of service were due to expire. For example, of the 956 Union infantry regiments on duty at the outset of 1864, 455 were scheduled to disband during the spring and summer. But both sides proved able in 1864 to effect a significantly large, though not total, reenlistment of its veterans.

While every individual, to be sure, is unique, it is nevertheless possible to do some “collective personality profiling” of the Civil War soldiers. In such a process it becomes starkly evident that—at least in terms of human propensity—the people of the North and the South were much more alike than different. But if there existed any difference at all, what was the nature of this difference? The answer seems to be complicated. It well may be true, as the brilliant young scholar Reid Mitchell has concluded, that “the North had a superior will to fight the war it had to fight than the South had to fight its war”; and Yankees and Rebels were like mirror images—not truly different, yet quite thoroughly opposites.

But why did the Civil War soldiers fight, and why did they continue to do so? It is an intriguing question, one that Reid Mitchell and James McPherson, separately, have done good work in probing—and into which McPherson is continuing to inquire.

To fight, and to continue to fight, required some prodigious motivation, for the war became quite early a hard thing to endure. Mitchell found documentation that “a preacher's sermon on ‘the dear ones at home’ could start veterans crying.” “I must say I have had enough of the glory of war,” one trooper wrote in August 1862. “I am sick of seeing dead men and men's limbs torn from their bodies.” Another would write in the following December, “I did not have to go into the battle because I am so near bare-footed…[and] I can tell you I was glad that my shoes did not come, because I would rather lose a hundred dollars than go into battle.”

Yet, save for a truly negligible proportion of slackers and deserters, the soldiers usually did go into battle. Soldiers cared what the folks back home thought of them and, more important, they wanted to be regarded as truly having done their duty. But Mitchell perceives a different quality of motivation, North and South—and ultimately over time the North's cohesion grew tighter while the South's gradually deteriorated. The reality was that the Confederate experiment was in trouble from the outset: quite simply and starkly Confederate nationalism was weak while Northern nationalism was strong. This issue has been thoroughly discussed by many scholars: most notable are Paul D. Escott in After Secession; Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William Still in Why the South Lost the Civil War; and most recently (in a newly insightful context) Mark Grimsley in The Hard Hand of War.

As the conflict unfolded in an intensifying, stunning, and escalating process, it became very violent. If hatred for the enemy did not exist at the outset—and in some cases it did initially exist—it assuredly developed as the conflict wore on. Soldiers projected stark differences upon the individuals, and the culture, of the other side. This helped them not only to nurture their inner feelings of hate but also to become agents of depravity and destruction. “Americans surprised themselves with the extent of violence they could attain,” concluded Charles Royster, a recent student of the subject, “and the surprise consisted, in part, of getting what they had asked for.”

It was not, ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Prologue - The Dawn of Military Professionalism and an Era of Great Technological Change
• Part I - Background and Opening Phases of the American Civil War
• Part II - The War in Apparent Stalemate
• Part III - The Great Turning Points
• Part IV - Endgame Phases
• Epilogue - The Full Embodiment of Military Professionalism
• Glossary
• Index