Don't Know Much About History, Anniversary Edition: Everything You Need to Know About American History but Never Learned (Don't Know Much About®) (37 page)
Authors: Kenneth C. Davis
• Population: 22 million (4 million men of combat age).
• Economy: 100,000 factories.
1.1 million workers.
20,000 miles of railroad (70 percent of U.S. total; 96 percent of all railroad equipment).
$189 million in bank deposits (81 percent of U.S. total bank deposits).
$56 million in gold specie.
CONFEDERACY
• Eleven states.
• Population: 9 million (3.5 million slaves; only 1.2 million men of combat age).
• Economy: 20,000 factories.
101,000 workers.
9,000 miles of railroad.
$47 million in bank deposits.
$27 million in gold specie.
In addition, the North vastly outproduced the South in agricultural products and livestock holdings (except asses and mules). The only commodity that the South produced in greater quantities than the North was cotton, raised by slave labor. The North had the means to increase its wartime supplies and ship them efficiently by rail. The South would have to purchase weapons, ships, and arms from foreign sources, exposing itself to a Union naval blockade.
On the South’s side of the balance sheet were several small but significant factors. The U.S. Army was largely comprised of and led by southerners who immediately defected to the South’s cause. The armies of the North were largely going to be made up of conscripts from urban areas, many of them immigrants who spoke little or no English, were less familiar with arms and tactics, and would be fighting on “foreign” turf for the dubious goals, in their minds, of “preserving the Union” and stopping the spread of slavery. All of this gave the southern armies an immediate advantage in trained soldiers and command leadership. In addition, the war would be fought primarily in the South. All the advantages of fighting at home—familiarity with terrain, popular partisan support, the motivation of defending the homeland—which had contributed to the American defeat of the British in the Revolution, were on the side of the Confederacy.
What was the difference between the Confederate and U.S. constitutions?
One week after Lincoln’s inaugural address, on March 11, the Confederacy adopted a constitution. Given the long-held arguments that the crisis was over such issues as federal power and states’ rights, and not slavery, it might be assumed that the new Confederate nation adopted some very different form of government, perhaps more like the Articles of Confederation, under which the states operated before the Constitution was adopted.
In fact, the Constitution of the Confederate States of America was based almost verbatim on the U.S. Constitution. There were, however, several significant but relatively minor differences, as well as one big difference:
• The preamble added the words, “each State acting in its sovereign and independent character,” and instead of forming “a more perfect Union,” it was forming “a permanent federal government.” It also added an invocation to “Almighty God” absent from the original (see Chapter 3: “What three-letter word is not in the Constitution?”).
• It permitted a tariff for revenue but not for protection of domestic industries, though the distinction between the two was unclear.
• It altered the executive branch by creating a presidency with a single six-year term, instead of (then) unlimited four-year terms. However, the presidency was strengthened with a line item veto with which certain parts of a budget can be removed by the president. (Many U.S. presidents of both parties have argued for the line item veto as a means to control congressional spending. A line item veto was finally passed in 1996 and used first by President Bill Clinton. However, in 1998 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the line item veto was unconstitutional.)
• The major difference between the two constitutions regarded slavery. First, the Confederate version didn’t bother with neat euphemisms (“persons held in service”) but simply and honestly called it slavery. While it upheld the ban on the importation of slaves from abroad, the Confederate constitution removed any restrictions on slavery. Slavery was going to be protected and extended into any new territory the Confederacy might acquire.
In other words, while “states’ rights” is a powerful abstraction, and the back-and-forth between federal power and the power of the states has been a theme throughout American history, there was really only one right that the southern states cared about. Examining the speeches by southern leaders (see Calhoun above) and the Confederate constitution itself underscores the fact that the only right in question was the right to continue slavery without restriction, both where it already existed and in the new territories being opened up in the West.
1861
April 12
The war officially begins when South Carolina militia forces commanded by General Pierre G. T. Beauregard (1818–93), second in the West Point class of 1838, bombard Fort Sumter, the federal garrison in the harbor at Charleston, South Carolina. Lacking sufficient supplies, the fort’s commander surrenders.
April 15
Declaring a state of “insurrection,” Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers for three months’ service. Lincoln rejects the suggestion that black volunteers be accepted.
April 17
Virginia secedes, the eighth and most influential state to do so. Poorly defended, Washington, D.C., lies but a hundred miles from Richmond, seat of the Confederacy. From the White House, Lincoln can see Confederate flags flying over Arlington, Virginia.
April 19
In Baltimore, crowds sympathetic to the Confederacy stone Union troops marching to reinforce the capital; four soldiers are killed, the first casualties of the war. President Lincoln orders a naval blockade of southern ports. The blockade will prevent cotton, the South’s principal cash crop, from being shipped to Europe and limit imports of munitions and other supplies crucial to the South’s war effort. The Union navy is small at the time, and many of its commanders and sailors are southerners who defect, but the American merchant marine is powerful, and merchant ships are pressed into service. Coupled with a major shipbuilding effort, the navy soon has hundreds of ships—including the first generation of ironclad warships—available to enforce the blockade, making this strategy a significant element of the Union’s eventual victory.
At the suggestion of General Winfield Scott, the seventy-five-year-old, arthritic, and overweight commander of the U.S. Army, Lincoln asks Robert E. Lee (1807–70) to take field command of the Union forces. Instead, Lee resigns his U.S. Army commission on April 20 and assumes a commission in the Confederate army. Torn over the oath he took upon entering the United States Army, Lee decides he cannot take up arms against his home state of Virginia.
Lee is not alone. Many of the battle-tested commanders in the U.S. Army are southerners who join the Confederate forces. In the war’s early period, the Union armies will be led by generals who are political appointees. This disparity in leadership quality is a major factor in keeping the Confederacy’s military hopes alive and prolonging the war.
May 6
Arkansas and Tennessee secede, the ninth and tenth states to join the Confederacy, although the eastern parts of Tennessee remain loyal to the Union and contribute troops to Union armies.
May 13
British queen Victoria announces Great Britain’s neutrality in the conflict. Although the Confederacy is not recognized diplomatically, it is given “belligerent status,” meaning British merchants could trade with the Confederate States.
May 20
North Carolina secedes, the eleventh and final Confederate state. It will suffer the heaviest death toll of any Confederate state.
May 24
Union troops move into Alexandria, Virginia, across the Potomac River from Washington, D.C. Elmer Ellsworth, a close friend of Lincoln’s, becomes the first combat fatality of the war. He is shot while removing a Confederate flag from a hotel roof. The hotel keeper who shot him, James T. Jackson, is killed by Union troops. Both men become martyrs to their respective sides.
July 2
Lincoln authorizes the suspension of the constitutional right of habeas corpus.
July 21
The First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas). In Virginia, Confederate armies under Generals Joseph E. Johnston (1807–91) and Beauregard rout Union troops. Poor Union generalship is largely to blame, a problem that bedevils the Union war effort as Lincoln searches for effective commanders. During the fighting, Confederate General Thomas J. Jackson (1824–63), West Point class of 1846 and a professor of military tactics and natural philosophy at Virginia Military Institute, is given the nickname Stonewall for his leadership of the stand made by his troops that turned the tide of battle.
August 5
After the crushing defeat at Bull Run, the Union realizes that this is not going to be a ninety-day war. To pay for the war, Congress passes the first income tax law, and enlistment periods are increased from three months to two years.
August 10–30
In the West, Union forces are defeated at Wilson’s Creek, Missouri, and one of the Union’s most experienced commanders, General Frémont, the Pathfinder, withdraws, surrendering much of Missouri, a border state that had not joined the Confederacy. To reverse his military losses, Frémont declares martial law and announces that the slaves of secessionists are free. Lincoln requests that this order be withdrawn, but Frémont refuses, and Lincoln removes him from command.
October 21
Battle of Ball’s Bluff (Virginia). Another rout of Union forces, with some 1,900 Union troops killed.
November 1
Lincoln forces aging General Winfield Scott to retire, and replaces him with George B. McClellan (1826–85) as general-in-chief.
1862
January 11
Edwin Stanton replaces Simon Cameron as war secretary. Cameron’s War Department had been riddled by corruption and mismanagement.
January 27
Lincoln issues General War Order Number 1, calling for a Union offensive; McClellan ignores the order.
January 30
The Union ironclad ship
Monitor
is launched.
February 6
Opening a Union offensive in the West, General Ulysses S. Grant (1822–85) initiates a campaign in the Mississippi Valley, capturing Fort Henry on the Tennessee River. Ten days later, Grant takes Fort Donelson, near Nashville.
February 25
Nashville, Tennessee, surrenders to Union troops, and the city remains in Union control for the rest of the war.
March 9
In the first battle between two ironclad ships, the Union
Monitor
engages the Confederate
Virginia
(formerly the USS
Merrimac
) off Hampton Roads, Virginia. The battle is inconclusive, but the
Virginia
is scuttled to prevent her capture.
March 11
Annoyed at McClellan’s inaction, Lincoln removes him as general-in-chief, replacing him with General Henry W. Halleck, but makes him head of the Army of the Potomac.
April 4
The Union Army of the Potomac begins the Peninsular Campaign aimed at Richmond, capital of the Confederacy. Stonewall Jackson will successfully tie up these Union troops for two months.
April 6–7
Battle of Shiloh (Pittsburg Landing, Tennessee). Confederate forces under General Albert S. Johnston (1803–62) attack Grant’s army. Union forces are nearly defeated, but reinforcements arrive and drive off the Confederate army. Losses are staggering: 20,000 Union and Confederate soldiers are killed or wounded in the two days of fighting; the combined losses are more than the total American casualties in the Revolution, the War of 1812, and the Mexican War put together.
April 16
President Jefferson Davis signs the Confederate Conscription Act, the first military draft in American history.
April 25
The important port city of New Orleans, Louisiana, surrenders to Union Flag Officer David Farragut. Pushing north on the Mississippi River, Farragut captures Natchez, Mississippi, on May 12.
