struction of the army commanded by Joseph E. Johnston, now a full general. Precise methods for reaching the Confederate capital differed. President Lincoln favored an overland advance that would always keep an army between the Confederates and Washington. McClellan agreed at first and then changed his views in favor of a waterborne move by the Army of the Potomac to Urbana on the Rappahannock. From there, he could drive to Richmond before Johnston could retire from the Manassas area to intercept him. He felt that the Washington fortifications, an elaborate system of earthen forts and battery emplacements then in advanced stages of construction, would adequately protect the capital while the field army was away. Johnston, however, rendered this plan obsolete; he withdrew from Manassas to Fredericksburg, halfway between the two capitals and astride McClellan’s prospective route of advance. Early in March McClellan moved his army out to the deserted Confederate camps around Manassas to give his troops some field experience. While he was in the field, Lincoln relieved him as General in Chief, doubtless on the ground that he could not command one army in the field and at the same time supervise the operations of all the armies of the United States. Lincoln did not appoint a successor. For a time he and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton took over personal direction of the Army with the advice of a newly constituted Army board consisting of the elderly Maj. Gen. Ethan A. Hitchcock and the chiefs of the War Department bureaus. |
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When events overtook the Urbana scheme, McClellan began to advocate a seaborne move to Fort Monroe, Virginia (at the tip of the peninsula formed by the York and James Rivers), to be followed by an overland advance up the peninsula. If the troops moved fast, he maintained, they could cover the seventy-five miles to Richmond before Johnston could concentrate his forces to stop them. This plan had promise, for it took advantage of Federal control of the seas and a useful base of operations at Fort Monroe and there were fewer rivers to cross than by the overland route. Successful neutralization of the Confederate ironclad Virginia (formerly the U.S.S. Merrimac) by the Union’s revolutionary ironclad Monitor on March 9 had eliminated any naval threat to supply and communications lines, but the absence of good roads and the difficult terrain of the peninsula offered drawbacks to the plan. Lincoln approved it, providing McClellan would leave behind the number of men that his corps commanders considered adequate to ensure the safety of Washington. McClellan gave the President his assurances but failed to take Lincoln into his confidence by pointing out that he considered the Federal troops in the Shenandoah Valley to be covering Washington. In listing the forces he had left behind, he counted some men twice and included several units in Pennsylvania not under his command.Embarkation began in mid-March, and by April 4 advance elements had moved out of Fort Monroe against Yorktown. The day before, however, the commander of the Washington defenses reported that he had insufficient forces to protect the city. In addition, Lt. Gen. Thomas J. "Stonewall" Jackson had become active in the Shenandoah Valley. Lincoln thereupon told Stanton to detain one of the two corps that were awaiting embarkation at Alexandria. Stanton held back Brig. Gen. Irvin McDowell’s corps of 30,000 men, seriously affecting McClellan’s plans. While a small Confederate garrison at Yorktown made ready to delay McClellan, Johnston hurried his army to the peninsula. In Richmond, Confederate authorities had determined on a spectacularly bold diversion. Robert E. Lee, who had moved rapidly to the rank of full general, had assumed the position of military adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis on March 13. Charged with the conduct of operations of the Confederate armies under Davis’ direction, Lee saw that any threat to Washington would cause progressive weakening of McClellan’s advance against Richmond. He therefore ordered Jackson to begin a rapid campaign in the Shenandoah Valley close to the Northern capital. The equivalent of three Federal divisions was sent to the valley to destroy Jackson. Lincoln and Stanton, using the telegraph and what military knowledge they had acquired, devised plans to bottle up Jackson and destroy him. But Federal forces in the valley were not under a locally unified command. They moved too slowly; one force did not obey orders strictly; and directives from Washington often neglected to take time, distance, or logistics into account. Also, in Stonewall Jackson, the Union troops were contending against one of the most outstanding field commanders America has ever produced. Jackson’s philosophy of war was: "Always mystify, mislead, and surprise |
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the enemy, if possible; and when you strike and overcome him, never give up the pursuit as long as your men have strength to follow; for an army routed, if hotly pursued, becomes panic-stricken and can then be destroyed by half their number." When McClellan reached the peninsula in early April he found a force of ten to fifteen thousand Confederates under Maj. Gen. John B. Magruder barring his path to Richmond. Magruder, a student of drama and master of deception, so dazzled McClellan that instead of brushing the Confederates aside he spent a month in a siege of Yorktown. But Johnston, who wanted to fight the decisive action closer to Richmond, decided to withdraw slowly up the peninsula. At Williamsburg, on May 5, McClellan’s advance elements made contact with the Confederate rear guard under Maj. Gen. James Longstreet, who successfully delayed the Federal advance. McClellan again pursued in leisurely fashion, always believing that he was outnumbered and about to be attacked in overwhelming force by Johnston. By May 25 two corps of the Army of the Potomac had turned southwest toward Richmond and crossed the sluggish Chickahominy River. The remaining three corps were on the north side of the stream with the expectation of making contact with |
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McDowell, who would come down from Fredericksburg. Men of the two corps south of the river could see the spires of the Confederate capital,
but Johnston’s army was in front of them. (See Map 24.) McClellan had planned to use his superior artillery to break through the Richmond defenses, but Lee struck the Union Army before it could resume the advance. Lee’s dispositions for the Battle of Mechanicsville on June 26 present a good illustration of the principles of mass and economy of force. On the north side of the Chickahominy, he concentrated
65,000 men to oppose Brig. Gen. Fitz-John Porter’s V Corps of 30,000. Only 25,000 were left before Richmond to contain the remainder
of the Union Army. When Lee attacked, his timing and coordination
were not yet refined. Jackson of all people seemed lethargic and moved slowly; and the V Corps defended stoutly during the day. McClellan thereupon withdrew the V Corps southeast to a stronger position at Gaines’ Mill. Porter’s men constructed light barricades and made ready. Lee massed 57,000 men and assaulted 34,000 Federals on June 27. The fighting was severe, but numbers told and the Federal line broke. Darkness fell before Lee could exploit his advantage, and McClellan took the opportunity to regroup Porter’s men with the main army south of the Chickahominy. |
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Map 24 |
By the first day of July McClellan had concentrated the Army of the Potomac on a commanding plateau at Malvern Hill, northwest of Harrison’s Landing. The location was strong, with clear fields of fire to the front and the flanks secured by streams. Massed artillery could sweep all approaches, and gunboats on the river were ready to provide
fire support. The Confederates would have to attack by passing through broken and wooded terrain, traversing swampy ground, and ascending the hill. At first Lee felt McClellan’s position was too strong to assault. Then, at 3:00 P.M. on July 1, when a shifting of Federal troops deceived him into thinking there was a general withdrawal, he changed his mind and attacked. Again staff work and control were poor. The assaults, all frontal, were delivered piecemeal by only part of the army against Union artillery, massed hub to hub, and supporting infantry. The Confederate formations were shattered, costing Lee some 5,500 men. On the following day the Army of the Potomac fell back to Harrison’s Landing and dug in. After reconnoitering McClellan’s position,
Lee ordered his exhausted men back to the Richmond lines for rest and reorganization. His attacks, while costly, had saved Richmond for the Confederacy. The failure of the Union forces to take Richmond quickly forced President Lincoln to abandon the idea of exercising command over the Union armies in person. On July 11, 1862, he selected as new General in Chief Maj. Gen. Henry W. Halleck, who had won acclaim for the victories in the west. The President did not at once appoint a successor
in the west, which was to suffer from divided command for a time. Lincoln wanted Halleck to direct the various Federal armies in close concert to take advantage of the North’s superior strength. If all Federal armies coordinated their efforts, Lincoln reasoned, they could strike where the Confederacy was weak or force it to strengthen one army at the expense of another; eventually they could wear the Confederacy down, destroy the various armies, and win the war. |
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off on a wide turning movement through Thoroughfare Gap in the Bull Run Mountains around the northern flank of Pope’s army and subsequently followed the same route with the divisions commanded by General Longstreet. Up to this point the Confederates in the east had been following an inherently defensive strategy, though tactically they frequently assumed the offensive. But Davis and Lee, for a complicated set of political and military reasons, determined to take the offensive and invade the North in coordination with Maj. Gen. Braxton Bragg’s drive into Kentucky. Militarily, in the east, an invasion of Maryland would give Lee a chance to defeat or destroy the Army of the Potomac, uncovering such cities as Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, and to cut Federal com- |
Lee,
by great daring and rapid |
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munications with the states to the west. Lee also retained hopes that he could bring Maryland into the Confederacy.
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gave President Lincoln an opportunity to strike at the Confederacy psychologically and economically by issuing his preliminary Emancipation
Proclamation on September 22, 1862. Lincoln, while opposed to slavery and its extension to the western territories, was not an abolitionist.
He had stated publicly that the war was being fought over union or secession, with the slavery question only incidental, and had earlier overruled several generals who were premature emancipators. But he wanted to strike at the economy and military sustainment power of the Confederate states and to appeal to antislavery opinion in Europe. He had awaited the opportune moment that a Union victory would give him and decided that Antietam was suitable. Acting on his authority as Commander in Chief, he issued the proclamation that all slaves in states or districts in rebellion against the United States on January 1, 1863, would be thenceforward and forever free. The proclamation had no effect initially: only the states in rebellion were affected, and those states had no intention of implementing the proclamation. Slaves in the slaveholding border states that remained loyal to the Union were not touched, nor were the slaves in those Confederate areas that had been subjugated by Union bayonets. Thus the Emancipation Proclamation had no immediate effect behind the Confederate lines, except to cause a good deal of excitement. But thereafter, as Union forces penetrated the South, the newly freed people deserted the farms and plantations and flocked to the colors.
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THE EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION Throughout the Civil War, four slave states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri—had not |
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the War Department established the Bureau of Colored Troops, another innovation of the Civil War in that it was an example of Federal volunteer formations without official ties to specific states (others being the various U.S. sharpshooter regiments and the invalid Veteran Reserve Corps). By the end of the war 100,000 African Americans had enrolled as U.S. Volunteers while many other blacks served in state units, elsewhere in the armed forces, and as laborers for the Union Army. About 180,000 African Americans served the Union cause over the course of the war, making them an irreplaceable source of Army manpower. After Antietam both armies returned to face each other in Virginia, Lee situated near Culpeper and McClellan at Warrenton. But McClellan’s
slowness, his failure to accomplish more at Antietam, and perhaps his rather arrogant habit of offering gratuitous political advice to his superiors, coupled with the intense anti-McClellan views of the joint Congressional Committee on the Conduct of the War, convinced Lincoln
that he could retain him in command no longer. On November 7 Lincoln replaced him with Burnside, who had won distinction in operations that gained control of ports on the North Carolina coast and who had led the IX Corps at Antietam. Burnside, acutely aware of his own limitations, accepted the post with reluctance. |
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Map 25 |
the Federals’ approach the Confederate commander sent most of his men to Fort Donelson. Muddy roads delayed the Union Army’s advance,
but Foote’s seven gunboats plunged ahead and in a short firefight induced the defenders of Fort Henry to surrender. Indeed, the Confederates
had lowered their colors before Grant’s infantry could reach the action. The Tennessee River now lay open to Foote’s gunboats all the way to northern Alabama. General Grant was no rhetorician. Sparing with words, he never bombarded his troops with Napoleonic manifestos as McClellan did. After the capture of Fort Henry he simply telegraphed the somewhat surprised Halleck: "I shall take and destroy Fort Donelson on the 8th and return to Fort Henry." But inclement weather delayed the Federal movement until February 12. Then river craft carried some of the troops around to Fort Donelson. The rest of the troops moved overland under sunny skies and unseasonably mild temperatures. The spring-like weather induced the youthful soldiers to litter the roadside with overcoats, blankets, and tents. Winter once more descended upon Grant’s forces (soon to swell to nearly 27,000 men) as they invested Fort Donelson. Johnston, sure that the fall of this fort would jeopardize his entrenched camp at Bowling Green, hurried three generals and 12,000 reinforcements to Fort Donelson and then retired toward Nashville with 14,000 men. Even without reinforcements, Fort Donelson was a strong position. The main earthwork stood 100 feet above the river and with its outlying system of rifle pits embraced an area of 100 acres. The whole Confederate position occupied less than a square mile. Grant and Foote first attempted to reduce it by naval bombardment, which had succeeded at Fort Henry. But this time the Confederate defenders handled the gunboats so roughly that they withdrew. Grant then prepared for a long siege, although the bitter cold weather and lack of assault training among his troops caused him to have some reservations. The Confederates, sensing they were caught in a trap, attempted a sortie on February 15 and swept one of Grant’s divisions off the field. But divided Confederate command, not lack of determination or valor on the part of the fighting men, led to the ultimate defeat of the attack. The three Confederate commanders could not agree upon the next move, and at a critical moment Grant ordered counterattacks all along the line. By the end of the day Union troops had captured a portion of the Confederate outer works. Now surrounded by Union forces that outnumbered them almost two to one, the Confederate leaders decided they were in a hopeless situation. In a scene resembling something from a comic opera. Brig. Gen. John B. Floyd, who had been Buchanan’s Secretary of War and feared execution as a traitor, passed the command to Brig. Gen. Gideon Pillow. Pillow passed the command immediately to Brig. Gen. Simon B. Buckner, who asked Grant, an old friend, for terms. Soon afterward Grant sent his famous message: "No terms except unconditional and immediate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immediately upon your works." A legend and a nickname—Unconditional Surrender Grant—were born. Some Confederates escaped with Floyd and Pillow, and Col. Nathan B. Forrest led his cavalry through frozen backwaters to safety. But the bulk of the garrison, "from 12,000 to 15,000 prisoners … also |
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feeling, for he had established his headquarters at Savannah, nine miles downstream. Despite these early setbacks the Confederate armies in the west were still full of fight. As Federal forces advanced deeper into the Confederacy, it became increasingly difficult for them to protect the long lines of river, rail, and road supply and communications. Guerrilla and cavalry operations by colorful Confederate "wizards of the saddle" like John |
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Hunt Morgan, Joseph Wheeler, and Colonel Forrest followed Forrest’s adage of "Get ‘em skeered, and then keep the skeer on ‘em." Such tactics completely disrupted the timetable of Federal offensives. By summer and fall rejuvenated Confederate forces under General Bragg, Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith, and Maj. Gen. Earl Van Dorn were ready to seize the initiative. Never again was the South so close to victory, nor did it ever again hold the initiative in every theater of the war. The overall Confederate strategy called for a three-pronged advance from the Mississippi River all the way to Virginia. Twin columns under Bragg and Smith were to bear the brunt of the western offensive by advancing from Chattanooga into east Tennessee, then northward into Kentucky. They were to be supported by Van Dorn, who would move north from Mississippi with the intention of driving Grant’s forces out of west Tennessee. The western columns of the Confederacy were then to unite somewhere in Kentucky. At the same time these movements were to be coordinated with the planned invasion of Maryland, east of the Appalachians, by General Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. Much depended upon speed, good coordination of effort and communications, and the result of the attempts to woo Kentucky and Maryland into the arms of the Confederacy. Victory could stimulate Northern peace advocates, such as the Southern sympathizers known as Copperheads, to lobby for a peace treaty. Furthermore, a successful invasion might induce Great Britain and France to recognize the Confederacy and to intervene forcibly to break the blockade. This last hope was a feeble one. Emperor Napoleon III was interested primarily in advancing his Mexican schemes; he considered both recognition and intervention but would not move without British support. Britain, which pursued the policy of recognizing de facto governments, would undoubtedly have recognized the Confederacy eventually had it won the war. The British government briefly flirted with the idea of recognition and might have done so if the Confederates had put together a string of victories, but throughout the war Britain adhered to a general policy of neutrality and respect for the Union blockade. At first, things went well for the Confederates in the west. Bragg caught Buell off guard and without fighting a battle forced the Federal evacuation of northern Alabama and central Tennessee. But when Bragg entered Kentucky, he became enmeshed in the politics of "government making" in an effort to set up a state regime that would bind Kentucky to the Confederacy. Also, the Confederate invasion was not achieving the expected decisive results, since few Kentuckians joined Bragg’s forces and an attempt at conscription in east Tennessee failed completely. Without popular support, the invading Confederate forces faced eventual failure. Buell finally caught up with Bragg at Perryville, Kentucky, on October 7. Finding the Confederates in some strength, Buell began concentrating his own scattered units. The next morning, fighting began around Perryville over possession of drinking water. Brig. Gen. Philip H. Sheridan’s division forced the Confederates away from one creek and dug in. The battle as a whole turned out to be a rather confused affair, as Buell sought to concentrate units arriving from several differ |
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ent directions on the battlefield itself. Early in the afternoon Maj. Gen. Alexander M. McCook’s Union corps arrived and began forming a line of battle. At that moment Maj. Gen. Leonidas Polk’s Confederate corps attacked and drove McCook back about a mile, but Sheridan’s troops held their ground. Finally a Union counterattack pushed the Confederates
out of the town of Perryville. Buell himself remained at headquarters,
only two-and-a-half miles from the field, completely unaware of the extent of the engagement until it was nearly over. The rolling terrain had caused an "acoustic shadow," whereby the sounds of the conflict were completely inaudible to the Federal commander. While the battle ended in a tactical stalemate, Bragg suffered such severe casualties that he was forced to retreat. Coupled with Van Dorn’s failure to bypass Federal defenses at Corinth and carry out his part of the strategic plan, this setback forced the Confederates to abandon any idea of bringing Kentucky into the Confederacy.
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HARDEE’S TACTICS Before William J. Hardee (1815−1873) published Rifle and Infantry Tactics drill manual in 1855, the |
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Map 27 |
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part of New Mexico Territory north of the 34th Parallel as the Confederate
Territory of Arizona. Under Brig. Gen. Henry H. Sibley, inventor of a famous tent bearing his name, the Confederates successfully swept all the way to Santa Fe, capital of New Mexico, bypassing several Union garrisons on the way. But Sibley was dangerously overextended; and Federal troops reinforced by Colorado volunteers surprised the advancing
Confederates in Apache Canyon on March 26 and 28 as the Confederates
sought to capture the largest Union garrison in the territory at Fort Union. One of the bypassed Federal columns under Col. Edward R. S. Canby from Fort Craig meanwhile joined the Fort Union troops against the Confederates. Sibley, unable to capture the Union posts, unable to resupply his forces, and learning of yet a third Federal column converging on him from California, began a determined retreat down the Rio Grande valley. By May he was back in Texas and the Confederate invasion of New Mexico had ended. The fighting, on a small scale by eastern standards, provided valuable training for Federal troops involved later in Indian Wars in this area. Indeed, while the Confederate dream of a new territory and an outlet to the Pacific was shattered by 1862, Indian leaders in the mountain territories saw an opportunity to reconquer lost land while the white men were otherwise preoccupied. In 1863 and 1864 both Union and Confederate troops in the Southwest were kept busy fighting hostile tribes. In Missouri and Arkansas, fighting had erupted on a large scale by the early spring of 1862. Federal authorities had retained a precarious hold over Missouri when General Curtis with 11,000 men chased disorganized Confederates back into Arkansas. But, under General Van Dorn and Maj. Gen. Sterling Price, the Confederates regrouped and embarked upon a bold counteroffensive that ended only at Pea Ridge on March 7 and 8. Here, Van Dorn executed a double envelopment as half his army stole behind Pea Ridge, marched around three-fourths of Curtis’ force, and struck Curtis’ left rear near Elkhorn Tavern while the other half attacked his right rear. But in so doing, the Confederates uncovered their own line of communications; and Curtis’ troops turned around and fought off the attacks from the rear. After initial success, Van Dorn and Price were unable to continue the contest and withdrew. For three more years guerrilla warfare would ravage Missouri, but the Union grip on the state was secure. The year 1862, which began with impressive Union victories in the west, ended in bitter frustration in the east. Ten full-scale and costly battles had been fought, but no decisive victory had yet been scored by the forces of the Union. The Federals had broken the great Confederate counteroffensives in the fall, only to see their hopes fade with the advent of winter. Apparently the Union war machine had lost its earlier momentum and only decisive victories could regain the initiative. |
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1. How and why did Union war aims and policies change over the course of the war? Catton, Bruce. Glory Road. New York: Anchor Books, 1990. Other Readings Cooling, Benjamin F. Forts Henry and Donelson: The Key To the |
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Glatthaar, Joseph T. Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White Officers. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2000. Jones, Virgil C. The Civil War at Sea, 3 vols. New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, 1960, vol. 1, chs. 25–28; vol. 2, chs. 1–16. Luvaas, Jay, and Harold W. Nelson, eds. Guide to the Battle of Antietam: The Maryland Campaign in 1862. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1996. Sears, Stephen. Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam. Norwalk, Conn.: Easton Press, 1988. Shea, William L., and Earl J. Hess. Pea Ridge: Civil War Campaign in the West. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1992. Vandiver, Frank E. Rebel Brass: The Confederate Command System. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1993. |
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Last updated 25 August 2005
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