Lost Causes

Confederate Demobilization and the Making of Veteran Identity

Bradley R. Clampitt

• Publisher: LSU Press
• Year: 2022
• eBook ISBN: 9780807177662
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: American Civil War History
• Index: History

This groundbreaking analysis of Confederate demobilization examines the state of mind of Confederate soldiers in the immediate aftermath of war. Having survived severe psychological as well as physical trauma, they now faced the unknown as they headed back home in defeat. Lost Causes analyzes the interlude between soldier and veteran, suggesting that defeat and demobilization actually reinforced Confederate identity as well as public memory of the war and southern resistance to African American civil rights.
Intense material shortages and images of the war's devastation confronted the defeated soldiers-turned-veterans as they returned home to a revolutionized society. Their thoughts upon homecoming turned to immediate economic survival, a radically altered relationship with freedpeople, and life under Yankee rule—all against the backdrop of fearful uncertainty. Bradley R. Clampitt argues that the experiences of returning soldiers helped establish the ideological underpinnings of the Lost Cause and create an identity based upon shared suffering and sacrifice, a pervasive commitment to white supremacy, and an aversion to Federal rule and all things northern. As Lost Causes reveals, most Confederate veterans remained diehard Rebels despite demobilization and the demise of the Confederate States of America.

1

REBELS
RESOLUTE

THE MIND OF JOHNNY REB
UPON SURRENDER

When the final guns fell silent at Appomattox Court House, Virginia, at least one Confederate soldier believed that he and his comrades in the Army of Northern Virginia had claimed yet another triumph over their Federal foes. Under the impression that Rebel forces had disabled their opponents’ guns, a Virginia infantry sergeant confided to his diary that “All the men were jubilant as we concluded we had whipped the enemy.” The road to escape from Federal clutches appeared clear, but rather than advance to the front, the men received orders to countermarch and stack arms. When the soldiers prepared to dig breastworks, officers announced that such precaution would not be necessary. Unsure of what to think, the soldiers began to hear whispers of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. Unlike many of his comrades who now faced lengthy journeys across multiple states to reach their homes and families, the twenty-four-year-old Virginia sergeant would soon trek only one hundred miles. Similar to innumerable brothers-in-arms, however, the demise of Lee’s legendary army and the practical end of the Confederate experiment left him “thunderstruck.”1

Myriad scholarly studies document the predictably astonished pronouncements of soldiers and civilians around the South. Despite obvious signs of the weakening of Lee’s army—obvious at least in hindsight—Rebels in and out of the ranks expressed shock and dismay at the failure of the Confederate States of America and the downfall of its greatest army. Although a relative few anticipated defeat, many could not or would not believe the news. Indeed, they often vehemently denied the reports.2 Building upon extant literature, analysis of the reactions of soldiers still in the ranks around the Confederacy at the end of the war reveals that the dismay proved as near-universal as historians have generally believed, but what patterns do the sources reveal with regard to region of service? Did soldier accounts written during the tumultuous closing scenes of the war differ from those penned by veterans years later? Moreover, did the surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia necessarily signal the end of the war? If not, what proved necessary to crush the hopes of the most diehard Rebels? Finally, and most importantly, what does all of this indicate about the mindset of thousands of war-weary, battle-hardened men who journeyed home in 1865 to a world radically transformed?

Within the Army of Northern Virginia certain units remained so convinced of the fallacy of surrender reports that they prepared to shoot those who fled the scene or even spoke of capitulation. Others not only denied the reports but dismissed such talk as unrealistic, yet another in the series of ridiculous rumors that swept through the South by 1865. Still, as the day wore on and the reality of defeat confronted the grizzled veterans, men wept and wandered about unsure of the meaning of it all and uncertain of what to do next. One officer, prescient of the sentiments that would pervade all Rebel armies during the coming weeks, decried that “all was lost save honor.” Meanwhile, a member of the rearguard remembered the typical shock and tears at hearing the news, though with the advantage of years of hindsight, and suggested that by that point the men had recognized the inevitability of defeat.3

Elsewhere in Virginia astonishment ruled the day. To the west in the Shenandoah Valley, one observer compared soldiers to statues on horses when they heard the reports, while a group of soldiers who fled Lee’s army—in an attempt to reach the Army of Tennessee to the south—encountered still others who refused to believe the news. Most significantly, when the first demobilized soldier returned to his small hometown in West Virginia, locals not only dismissed his account of Lee’s surrender but allegedly arrested him on charges of desertion. Only the arrival of other soldiers during subsequent days secured his release. The treatment of the suspected deserter upon his return contrasts sharply with the typically warm receptions received by Confederates who returned home only after official surrender and parole, discussed in chapters three and five.4

Soldiers with General Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Tennessee—and other western troops scattered around the Carolinas, Georgia, Florida, Tennessee, Alabama, and Mississippi—exhibited similar surprise. In mid-April one diarist in Tennessee dismissed the news as mere propaganda reported in Yankee newspapers, while an officer on a recruiting trip in Georgia scoffed at the story: “It seemed unbelievable, and I denied the report.” Not to be outdone, an officer with a flair for the dramatic declared, “Great God! can it be true? I have never for a moment doubted the ultimate success of our cause. I cannot believe it.” A veteran who served in North Carolina at the time later recalled that he deemed the news absurd and had initially condemned demobilized soldiers who passed through as deserters.5 Trans-Mississippi Confederates received the dramatic news in similar fashion.6

One other category of Rebel combatants echoed the sentiments of shock and dismay but typically persisted longer in their incredulity. Southern men wasting away in northern prisons of course encountered different circumstances from those faced by their brothers-in-arms who surrendered in the field. Still in the service of their country yet unable to affect the war’s outcome, prisoners lived with feelings of helplessness, denied even the grim satisfaction to go down fighting. Chronic boredom, homesickness, and a listless existence subjected such men to daily rumors that suggested impending release. Most, however, eventually knew better than to believe rumors, even those that ultimately proved true. In one such case, a Georgia infantryman imprisoned at Fort Delaware, responded to premature reports of Lee’s capitulation penned a sarcastic diary entry: “believed it of course.” Some prisoners refused to accept as true the failure of Lee’s army even as late as May, and offered the perfectly reasonable argument that if the war had actually ended they would have been released from prison. For some only the sights and sounds of Yankee celebrations, the firing of salutes, and the parole and release of fellow prisoners-of-war convinced them of the demise of Lee’s army and eventually the death of the Confederacy.7

That raises a reasonable question—what did it take for diehard Rebels to believe that the Army of Northern Virginia had surrendered? Time after time in diaries, letters, and memoirs, southerners pointed to the sight of Lee’s disheveled veterans on their homeward trek. Soldiers in other armies routinely dismissed the reports until the reality of defeat marched passed them in the form of bedraggled comrades. In particular, the men of the Confederacy’s other potent force, the Army of Tennessee, generally dismissed the reports as mere rumor, until southbound trains carried their defeated comrades into North Carolina. Elsewhere, a soldier’s diary entry illustrated perfectly the common perspective. In early April in Lynchburg, Virginia, a Kentucky cavalry officer denied the reports of the final days of Lee’s army as the unreliable tales of stragglers and deserters. The Kentuckian refused to place stock in the words of such characters until the numbers increased during the ensuing days to such an extent that even the most intransigent Rebel could no longer deny reality.8

Some southerners of course did not need to see beaten warriors returning home in order to confront the certainty of defeat. A relative few believed the reports easily and others had even anticipated overall Confederate failure. At times such expressions doubtless reflect genuine sentiments, at other times closer analysis of the sources reveals wild swings in emotions during short periods. The Virginia infantryman who had presumed Rebel victory at Appomattox, for example, personifies the highs and lows experienced by Confederates during those momentous days in the spring and summer of 1865. On April 1, the twenty-four-year-old hoped for overall victory by prolonging the war and forcing Union leadership to tire of the conflict. He mocked what he believed to be northern dependence on foreign troops to replenish Grant’s ranks. The following day, however, amid swirling reports about the fate of Petersburg and Richmond, the young man worried: “I am afraid Grant will destroy this army if we have to fall back far. He has fresh cavalry, good horses—we have walking skeletons. I trust he will not follow too closely—but any soldier would have sense enough to do that.” The defeat of Lee’s army would end the war, in the mind of this soldier, but he hoped for another chance to fight. Insisting that he would never surrender, he speculated that he would never again see a “calm moon.” On April 3 he managed to express confidence and pessimism within the course of a single day. Petersburg and Richmond had indeed been evacuated, and he admitted that a massive explosion had frightened him. He made up his mind to resist the “invaders” to the last ditch but acknowledged that he may never see that opportunity. As his comrades speculated on the impending campaign, most expected a prolonged struggle, but he did not. Rather, he admitted that the war was essentially over. The emotional swings continued throughout the day and for more than a week. That soldier’s experience reminds the modern reader not to rely too heavily on a single diary entry, and to consider multiple factors that shaped sentiments.9

Clearly some combatants believed the news of Lee’s capitulation and fully understood its larger ramifications. One Richmond native who witnessed the burning and evacuation of his city acknowledged that he and many other soldiers chose not to wait for the end. He learned of Lee’s surrender while on the run to avoid capture and to reach a physician relative in Lynchburg to seek treatment for his wounded arm. Similarly, days earlier a cavalryman in Mississippi anticipated overall Confederate defeat even before Lee’s surrender. He wrote to his wife that the loss of Mobile, Alabama, had struck a severe blow to the southern cause. He wondered where the Yankees would strike next and lamented that they could attack wherever they chose. Most telling, although he knew that Confederate cavalry in the area led by Nathan Bedford Forrest would go after Federal forces, he admitted that the hungry, grumbling southerners simply were no longer up to the task. Weeks later, a Princeton-educated Confederate in Demopolis, Alabama, learned of Lee’s surrender only in late April. Although he had typically evinced strong morale, he admitted that no one doubted the news of Lee’s surrender, and that Johnston’s army now faced desperate circumstances. That Rebel grasped the reality of defeat and readied himself to move on. “This is the bluest place I have seen,” he lamented, “and I shall be glad to get away from it today.”10

Those individuals recorded or recalled logical responses to the historic events that surrounded them, yet they claimed no wisdom or foresight beyond that of their comrades and neighbors. Others, however, with the advantage of hindsight, later insisted that they had long since anticipated the demise of the southern republic. One aged Confederate veteran, writing in 1913, dated the death of the Confederacy as early as the fall of Vicksburg, Mississippi, in 1863, or at least the removal of Joseph E. Johnston from command of the Army of Tennessee during the Atlanta campaign in the summer of 1864. A fellow western Rebel emphasized the devastation of that army at the battle of Franklin in late 1864. Indeed, multiple veterans pointed to that final winter of the conflict. As one less-than-charitable memoirist remarked, from that point the inevitability of Confederate defeat was obvious to “all intelligent” people. That veteran, who somehow insisted that he and his comrades never lost faith in the administration in Richmond, bemoaned the government’s failure to secure a peace settlement by February 1865. He deemed all loss of life after that point unnecessary and recalled the difficulty that he and his comrades had encountered in exposing themselves to danger, with the knowledge that such risk was pointless. A comrade from Kentucky, meanwhile, insisted that after that winter, the “entire fabric was broken.”11

These purportedly prophetic comrades all wrote years after the war, not only with the advantage of hindsight but with the ability, and perhaps the desire, to shape history’s perception of them. In most cases the authors likely wrote truthfully, though such accounts permitted the veteran to claim that he had remained steadfast to the end but had recognized the severity of challenges that faced the Confederacy. Such an individual would appear worthy of the mantle of proud, masculine Confederate veteran, yet not delusional enough (years later) to have expected overall victory by late spring 1865. Another veteran who wrote during the postwar period illustrated the potential nuance of some recollections. Although the former Tennessee infantryman claimed to have seen the end coming, he acknowledged that defeat shocked most of his comrades, who had not even considered surrender. Though impressed with their bravery and dedication to the Confederate cause, the Tennessean insisted that his brothers-in-arms were too intelligent not to recognize the untenable state of affairs.12

Other Rebel soldiers, writing during the war’s closing scenes, described the opposite circumstances. They remained steadfast despite the submission of their comrades. One such soldier from Louisiana urged his mother to ignore unfavorable reports from the East and assured her that “As long as our army remains firm in their dedication to have our freedom, we have nothing to fear.” Others had yielded, he continued, but “I am willing to shoulder my gun as long as there is an armed yankee on the land.” Although he may have consciously sought to prop up his mother’s spirits, a subsequent letter to another correspondent reiterates his resolve.13

The letters of Private Benjamin Glover provide an example of a soldier who remained steadfast despite his recognition of impending defeat and also illustrate the ability of Confederate soldiers to reassure loved ones while confronting reality. An Alabama native who had moved to Florida two years before the war, Glover enlisted in an infantry regiment in his new home state. Thirty-three years of age at the end of the war, he wrote frequently to his wife, Mary Elizabeth, whom he affectionately referred to as Betty. Though identified as a farmer in the census, he descended from a line of prominent planters and possessed a personal estate valued at almost $40,000. Writing from North Carolina in early April, he urged Betty not to make herself uneasy and somehow pledged to her that he would be home by June. He had no reason to expect a leave of absence at that period of the war, so the assurance of his impending return could be interpreted as a sign that he expected the war to end soon. This becomes perfectly clear in light of his other advice, which included a warning not to accept Confederate money and not to pay any taxes or tithes. Though he admitted that the presence of Yankee forces in the region made him nervous for her safety, he clearly sought to establish a sense of normality. “Kiss the baby for me. Tell the negroes howdy.”14

Obviously most of Glover’s comrades recognized that the destruction of the Army of Northern Virginia heralded the downfall of the Confederacy. It remains equally evident, as illustrated by multiple historians, that a significant number of Rebels refused to concede defeat in response to the events at Appomattox. Many soldiers insisted on continued resistance and even offered various strategies to secure independence. Although it remains difficult to conjure a scenario that portends a Confederate victory without the Army of Northern Virginia at full strength, the notion of continued resistance should not be dismissed as wildly unrealistic. More importantly, although most modern readers recognize that the fateful meeting between Grant and Lee represented the beginning of the end, such a conclusion was by no means apparent to every Rebel at the time. Numerous Johnny Rebs examined throughout the remainder of this chapter insisted on continued resistance after Appomattox and some even acknowledged overall defeat in response to other, subsequent events.15

To be sure, those who continued to breathe fire and demand a fight to the last ditch even after Appomattox could not be considered representative of all Confederate soldiers in the ranks and certainly not indicative of the general sentiment of southern people. However, such individuals existed in meaningful numbers and persisted adamantly in their beliefs, or at least assertive in their claim...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1 REBELS RESOLUTE: The Mind of Johnny Reb upon Surrender
• 2 YANKEES & REBELS: The System of Confederate Demobilization
• 3 REBELS & REBELS: When Johnny Reb Came Marching Home
• 4 EVERY REBEL FOR HIMSELF: The Lawless Summer of 1865
• 5 REBELS REUNITED: Homecoming, Rebirth, and Redemption
• APPENDIX: Sample and Methodology
• NOTES
• BIBLIOGRAPHY
• INDEX