what were the causes that led to the american civil war ? What was the state of readiness of the army in the years preceding the war ? Who were the generals on both sides of the conflict that formed the initial strategy for the war For answers to these questions and more Civil War insights . Welcome to the U . S . Army history and Heritage podcast . The official podcast of the United States Army Center of Military History . The Center of Military History , writes and publishes the army's official history , manages the US Army Museum enterprise and provides historical support throughout the U . S . Army . Hello everyone and welcome to the United States Army history and Heritage podcast . I'm lee Reynolds , the strategic communications officer for the center of Military History . In this episode We're focusing on the army in the years leading up to the civil war through 1861 . Joining me for this discussion is historian and the executive director of the Center of Military History . Mr Charles our bowery , Jr thank you Mr Barry for joining me for this discussion . Glad to be here . So a little background on Mr Bowery . He is a retired army colonel who spent his 23 year career as an army aviator , flying Apache helicopters . He deployed twice to Iraq and commanded an Apache regiment in Afghanistan but of course he's no stranger to history . He received his bachelor's degree and Master's degree in History . He taught history at West Point and has published three historical books focused on the civil war . He's currently working on his PhD in history ? Alright , pretty impressive . So um what do you say we get into the discussion . Alright , so , before we actually discuss the military aspects of the war , I think we need to address the issues in american society at the time , Which led to the civil war . Can you describe what those issues were ? Sure the beginning of the war in 1861 is the end of a fairly long process of sectional conflict and that's a conflict , roughly speaking between the northern and southern states , That develops across the course of the 19th century , and it really has roots in the establishment of the United States , in the ratification of the constitution and then in some divergent ideas about what the new nation is going to be . The root cause of the civil war was the institution of slavery and the development And expansion of that institution across the United States in the years leading up to 1860 , and the beginning of the civil war and what I refer to slavery as in describing the causes of the war is to use the analogy of the tap root of a tree . So it is the , it is the root cause of the civil war , but it it leads to , and it exacerbates and it interacts with a number of other divisive issues in american society at the time , and the most sort of well known and easily understood of these is the concept of federalism and the question about whether the United States is a federal system of a strong central government that directs policy and the activities of the nation or whether political power in the nation is rooted in the states or in the local level . And so the concepts of state rights and slavery are really the , the twin driving factors that lead us to the civil war and the , the key events in which this sectional conflict is acted out really begin In the early years of the 19th century with the Missouri compromise in 1819 , And so we have a series of of political acts and developments in which north and South States rights and federalists , the two major republican parties , political parties at the time , the Democratic Party , uh , and first the , uh , the , the wig and then republican parties will , will work these things out . And so the , the question of state rights versus federal power and the growing expansion of slavery , particularly in the southern United States , are the twin dynamics that lead us to the sectional crisis That in turn leads to the secession of the 13 states that formed the Confederate states of America in the late 1860 and early 1861 . But all of this again is driven bye . This sectional conflict over slavery and in particular in the middle decades of the century . The expansion of slavery westward across the Mississippi River . In the aftermath of the mexican american war , The ceded lands from Mexico to the United States as an outcome of the war , the question becomes , will those territories be admitted to the United States as slave states or as free states . This is almost inevitable . This crisis of the civil war . Would you , would you say that or there have been varying schools of thought among historians , particularly in the course of the 20th century about whether the civil war was a so called irrepressible conflict that was bound to happen because of the competing moral imperatives of slavery and freedom , or whether this was the product of a so called blundering generation of incompetent politicians who were unable to reach political settlements and to create compromise as with most things in history , I think it's , there's some of both of elements of both of those schools of thought in the events that happen . I don't personally believe that any events are fore ordained or that they're bound to happen . But the fact remains that both north and south saw the institution of slavery as a game breaker or a deal breaker in terms of maintaining the territorial integrity of the United States . The southern states believed that the institution of slavery was enshrined in the constitution and that this formed a core aspect of their culture and society , not least of which because of its economic impact and it's important to the , to the agricultural economies of the south and many in the north growing abolitionist movement in particular and the Republican Party , which comes to rise out of the sectional crisis and has the election of Abraham Lincoln as the president in 18 60 takes anti slavery as a core position in its political program . And so we can fairly state that the institution of slavery , the expansion of slavery and the sectional conflict over slavery is what leads us to the war . Alright , good . Now , I think it was a good summation . I think it's a really good place to start for for this discussion . Just to put everything into context . Now I want to go back a little bit further , um , about 15 plus years before the civil war begins . And because I think it can be argued that the army leaders during the civil war got their first test in combat during the war with Mexico from 1846 to 48 . Um , so who were those leaders that fought side by side as junior officers and developed lasting friendships Only to be leading armies against each other some 15 years later . It's true that in a lot of respects service in the Mexican american war is a dress rehearsal or preliminary event for many of the , the leaders who will lead the union and confederate armies in the civil war . And so just about any famous civil war personality you can think of on either side probably had a part to play in the mexican american war and of course in my book , lee and Grant looks at the two prominent Union and confederate leaders , both of whom who served in the armies in Mexico and had formative experiences . So most of the , in fact really all of the , the men who will serve as generals as high commanders in the union confederate armies served in the Mexican war as junior officers or his company grade officers . And so they had , they didn't have high leadership experiences , but many of them saw combat . Many of them had individual missions to play , which tended to create a post war reputation for their competence or not . And as you said , a lot of them formed actual personal relationships with leaders to come on both sides through their service . And so their friendships formed and at the very least , the army officer corps of the time , which is very small , is very intimate . And all of these officers in the coming of the civil war will take their impressions of others , their understandings of their capabilities from what they learned during the Mexican war and for a lot of these officers to become an officer . I guess in that time period most of these officers that we'll be talking about were West Point graduates . Were there other ways at the time that people were becoming officers and you know , what was the ratio of West point to other officers . The american armies that fight in Mexico are About 50% regular army units . And these are again office erred primarily by West Point graduates by military academy graduates , but then the other half of the army are state level militia units . And these units are office erred by a variety of men , some of whom will have been military academy graduates who left the army and some of whom will be elected from local communities . This will be locally prominent men . An interesting example of that . This latter case would be Jefferson Davis of course , who goes on to be the president of the confederate states of America . But jefferson Davis is a West Point graduate who leaves the army almost immediately after graduating . He doesn't really serve any time in the regular army and he is elected the leader of a unit of riflemen from Mississippi because he's from Mississippi and the unit when they're forming and electing their officers are gonna look around for men with military experience and it's natural to look to a West Point graduate who is in your community to lead a unit . And so in a variety of forms , West Point graduates become a dominant feature of this army . And then you talked about lee and Grant and um , we have your book here and it's a fascinating book . It's a , it's a great book . I do recommend that uh , for people to understand who these gentlemen were , but they were both in uh the war with Mexico . And did they did they know each other back then . They had very limited contact one another . They knew who they were . Of course , again , as I said , this is a small army . Grant spent much of the Mexican war as a unit level quartermaster officer . So he was a supply and logistics officer for for an infantry regiment . Whereas robert E lee functioned more as a scout and an aide and an engineering officer for a higher level command that of Winfield scott . During the expedition from veracruz inland to Mexico City robert E lee serves on the staff of Winfield scott and does a variety of sort of reconnaissance and scouting tasks . So they did know each other . And then one of the other things that I find fascinating linking both that war and in the Civil war is who the commander was Winfield scott . So , um , what happened with his career ? So he was commander of the troops in the war with Mexico . And then when the Civil War starts , he's the commander again . But so what did he do in those interwar years ? Winfield scott at the outbreak of the Civil War is the commanding general of the US Army And he's a two star general , major general . But he is a long serving officer . He was born in 1786 . And so he is truly of the Revolutionary generation and by 1860 , his campaigning days are over . He is extremely obese to the point where it's virtually impossible for him to mount a horse by himself without assistance . And so he's generally office bound and he is just a few uh months really from retirement from the army and he's only about six years from his death . He dies in 1866 . But at the , as I said at the , at the time of the outbreak of war , he's the commanding general . And so he's an immensely influential officer in the personal lives of many of the the younger officers who will rise to leadership positions in the civil war armies because he served as their commanding officer at various points , many of these officers will have made their way through the army headquarters where they'll have worked directly for Winfield scott and others are mentored by Winfield scott throughout his career . At the beginning of the war . As I said , Winfield scott is the commanding general of the US Army and so it falls to him to articulate the initial northern strategy to defeat this rebellion and to bring the confederate states back into the Union . And scott develops what is called in some circles , uh , a so called anaconda plan or a plan to use northern military power , both land and naval forces to constrict and to cut off lines of communication and commerce between the confederate states of America and the outside world and so eventually to in effect starve off their commerce and their internal movement to the point where they sue for peace and return to the Union with the hope being that this strategic approach will mean that northern armies will not have to march into the south and engage in direct large scale combat with southern forces , which of course we know will cause lots of casualties that will cause damage . And so there's a real hope that early in the war and this is a common belief on both sides of the , of , of the war at the beginning is that the , each side believes the other side is driven to war by a small , irrational minority of leaders who are only interested in a purely political agenda . And that the mass of both of the people north and south don't want a war and that their natural brotherhood as american citizens will overcome this irrational leadership and they'll be shown the error of their ways by the military might of these two sections . And so for the north , they believe that secession was driven by a very small , autocratic minority of large landholders who are interested only in perpetuating slavery and that their views don't reflect the mass of southern popular opinion and that once the southern people see northern marshall might displayed on the battlefield or these blockades that will happen on rivers and in the oceans that they will come back to the fold if you will . All right . And , and so , um , before we get into the actual start of the war , I want to address what did the army look like in the interwar years again . Um as far as weapons and technology , how did it transform uh in those respects from the war with Mexico to the beginning of the civil war at the outbreak of war in 1860 , the United States Army's regular army Is comprised of less than 18,000 men . So a very very small number of men . It's a tiny army even in world terms really really small countries like Belgium have larger armies than the United States . Because again back to the sort of the early national period in american history , there's a great distrust of standing armies in american history at that time . And many people believe that a large standing army is an instrument of coercion by the government . So there's a real reluctance to invest in a large standing army . and so the the US regular army again less than 18,000 men On paper , it's 18,000 men . There are about 16,500 men on active duty at the outbreak of the war , Which equates to approximately 290 companies of troops . And these are in the three branches , the infantry , the cavalry and the artillery . So so 290 companies of men . All but 18 of those companies are stationed west of the Mississippi River . So let's let that sink in for a minute . There are 18 companies of troops . So if one company has on paper about 100 men . So that's less than 2000 soldiers in the entire United States Army east of the Mississippi River , wow ! So the mass of these men are stationed in the Western United States . Because the other development of course in American society in the 19th century is the opening of the West , which is begun by the process of removing native Americans from their land onto reservations and the westward expansion of white American citizens to create farms , urban areas , cities and development west of the Mississippi in western lands . And so the U . S . Army's role in this westward expansion is to aid it and to protect american citizens from attacks from raids by native americans to secure lines of communication . Stagecoach routes , major westward routes of migration , the santa fe , trail , the Oregon trail and railroads . The army is engaged in a large number of small installations and detachments of troops , infantry , cavalry , and artillery that are dispersed across the frontier and small posts to protect the population and to contest lands with native american tribes and our army troops were all as far out as California . And and so they're spread across The landscape in small units of 50 to 100 men or even less . They carry out long campaigns in the saddle of providing security for local areas to responding to incidents to carrying out exploration duty , to garrisoning the border with Mexico to garrisoning coastal fortifications and posts across California , there is a growing conflict with England over the Northern United States border in what is now the pacific northwest . So army soldiers are engaged in all of these very small scale activities . To the point where one general who will go on to high leadership in the confederate army during the civil war will state of his experience before the war , that in the antebellum years , I knew everything there was to know about commanding a company of dragoons and I forgot everything else because my task was small unit leadership . And that is even for those who will go on to be high commanding generals on both sides . Their experiences in the pre war era are largely of very small unit operations . And let's talk a little bit then about the weapons , what what kind of weapons were they using ? Did we have rifle border yet ? Um things like that . The U . S . Army models itself in its uniforms and its doctrine and its tactics in the mid 19th century , primarily on the french army , which is the world's foremost model for military force . And of course this is the post Napoleonic era . This is before the rise of the Prussian empire and sort of german military dominance which comes later in the century . And so all things french in terms of , of tactics , in terms of organizations , in terms of what we call doctrine today and in terms of weaponry are really come from the french experience . The primary away , the primary infantry , small arms weapon of the period before the Civil War is a smooth bore musket . So it's a it's a it's a what is first initially a percussion fired musket , I'm sorry , a mat or a A flintlock musket earlier in the 19th century , which gives way to a better percussion technology later on . But the bottom line is that this is a smooth bore weapon firing a round ball with a maximum effective range of 100 yards or less . Uh It's notoriously inaccurate . Uh but it can be , it's reasonably hardy , it's reliable and it can be loaded and fired quickly by a soldier , relatively speaking . But it's a muzzle loading weapon . A french soldier named many develops a munitions technology in the middle of the century that will come to have a significant impact on the Civil War , in that he develops a conical bullet that is fired from a rifled musket . And the trouble to this point with a rifled weapon was that the rifling of the grooves made it very difficult to ram that projectile down from the muzzle down into the breech of the weapon . And so they were very slow to fire and that made them less useful for infantry combat . Large scale , the Minie ball as it's called , as it becomes to be called , is conical in shape and the projectile is smaller than the circumference of the rifle barrel , but it has grooves in it and it has a cutout at the bottom of the projectile so that when the gas is the powder gasses of the exploding powder that fire the bullet contact the back of the projectile . It expands and the grooves in the around the projectile will catch in the grooves of the rifled barrel , spin it , make it accurate and increase its velocity to a great deal . And so this technology , when it's applied to initially a smooth bore musket that is rifled , will turn these weapons into much more effective infantry weapons with a longer range . So the maximum effective range in some cases will go out 2-3 , yards and it will increase the muzzle velocity of the weapon to a great degree and make it a more effective weapon for killing the enemy . As we approach the civil war arms manufacturers , notably in America , the Springfield arsenal in massachusetts and then in great Britain . The Enfield works will start to manufacture weapons that start out their lives as rifles . And so they will they will manufacture what are called rifle muskets where the firing mechanism is a paper cartridge that is a self contained cartridge and wrapped in paper with the projectile and an amount of powder to fire the projectile which is loaded into the barrel . So you basically load the powder down into the rip off the top of the paper cartridge , you pour the powder into the muzzle , you tamp the bullet down on top of the powder , you place a small copper cap with fulminated mercury inside of it on a nipple under the hammer of the weapon . You pull the trigger . The hammer contacts the percussion cap , which creates a spark that fires the powder and fires a bullet . Uh This is a process that produces a more reliable shot from the weapon and a trained soldier can get off multiple shots per minute with this weapon at a longer range and so while one can overstate the impact of the rifle musket on the course of the civil war , and a lot of commentators and writers have . What you can say at the very least , is that the weapon expands the field of battle and it changes the tactical calculus of combat and civil war . And how did it change ? Because they were still for the most part , I think , using the linear structure . So how did it change the tactical aspect of the war ? It's interesting , it changes the the tactical conduct of the war in a number of ways . And so the most basic way is that it limits the amount of time or that it limits an enemy's ability to sort of march around the battlefield and get these mass linear formations into into a combat formation to engage the enemy when your enemy on the field of battle is firing a weapon that has a maximum effective range of 100 yards . You basically have the entire geometry of the battlefield outside of 100 yards to march . As deliberately as you want to make your dispositions to get your line perfect where you want it maybe to position on the flank of an enemy to inflate their line or something like that . But you have a lot of ability to do that without being worried about the enemy's fire , disrupting or killing your your formation . When the enemy is equipped with a weapon like a rifled musket which has a longer range and greater muzzle velocity , you have less room to do that . You need to move from place to place faster . So the rate of march in the tactical manuals of the day will increase so that the unit can get from point A to point B more quickly and reduce its exposure and then with this increased effectiveness by the individuals shoulder fired arm , you want more of your men on a wider line to increase the amount of lead going downrange . You want more people firing at one time and so you get a process of basically extending what were in the , in the american revolutions time , really compact mass formations . You get units that are expanded out in space and in many cases you get units that begin to employ something that we would recognize today as small unit tactics where men will move individually or in small groups , they will use the cover of the land to move from place to place in this environment . Skirmishing becomes much more important sort of small unit action . And so the tactics of the battlefield will change . And then the last thing that really changes in the course of the war is that because these shoulder fired weapons are more deadly units on the battlefield will begin to dig in and they will begin to use materials around them on the battlefield to shield themselves from enemy fire . And so you get for the first time in history , the widespread use of what we call field fortifications , where a unit will stop , they will dig trenches , they'll pile the dirt up in front of them . They'll use fence rails or trees or rocks and they will employ field fortifications and in many cases they'll fight from behind these fortifications . And what about artillery , were there any changes in artillery and technology and then how we would use it artillery in the 19th century is primarily an antipersonnel weapon . So it gives you a larger projectile , the ability for more killing power up close and support of infantry forces , but it is a direct fire weapon we don't have in the 19th century . What we would know today is indirect fire or or long range over the horizon , sort of fires . In the 19th century . You wheel your artillery around the battlefield , you try to Masset and you try to use its effects directly on the enemy , either on his infantry forces , on his wagons and supplies or on his opposing artillery . But it's done by direct fire . And so the technology for artillery remains relatively static during the Civil War , but it's mainly an antipersonnel weapon . What about rifle boards and artillery ? Did that come in yet ? It does . And so there are , there are lots of different types of artillery employed during the war . Rifled artillery tends to be more difficult to employ . It's more expensive to produce . So there are less of them in the armies and their projectiles because of the metallurgical technology of the day . Their projectiles tend to be smaller and so they tend to have less of the effect that you want in the 19th century and artillery , which is really you want masses of of metal going downrange toward the enemy . And so the primary artillery weapons in tactical forces during the Civil War will be smooth bore artillery because they are larger . They have a heavier weight of shot and projectile going down range and they're easier to use and maintain . And so that famous 12 pounder sort of napoleon gun is the most famous sort of artillery piece in the Civil War for that reason , because it's the most ubiquitous final note on on technology . So now we've got railroads , we've got the Telegraph . How are they changing the way we fight ? These technological advancements coupled with the fact that the american civil war is really the first war in world history that employs mass formations of non professional soldiers . So civilian soldiers . So these technological and social developments together make the civil war the first example of what we would call a modern war . And this is a , this is a common sort of history , a graphical debate about the civil war . Is that the last of the old Napoleonic wars with its technologies ? Or is it the first of the new wars ? Those who argue that the Civil war is the first of the new Phase of warfare that will go into the 20th century point to these technological developments . Railroads allow for the large scale movement of large troop formations for long distances across the landscape . They're employed primarily again in transportation , not what we would call battlefield movement of troops . So you don't really move troops around the battlefield by railroad , but what you can do is move them across vast expanses of distance to move them , for example from one theater to another or from one operational area to another just in a matter of hours or days where those movements would take weeks or months on foot . Mhm . Other technologies that are that are really employed steam technology . In addition to railroads , steam technology means that naval forces will grow in capability during the Civil war and you will begin to see ironclad ships employed in the Civil war and these are powered by by steam engines and not by sail and so steam technology enables a lot of things on the naval side . Then of course you have communications technology . These are technologies that really changed american society forever during the mid 19th century and they change warfare to this tech . This technology of the telegraph enables just like transportation and railroads enables communications rapidly across very , very long distances where before your only mode of communication was by a courier carrying a message over the landscape on a horse . And so the telegraph again and telegraph wires will will correspond with railroads and they will enable long distance communications . As an example , On the third day of the Battle of Gettysburg in July 1863 , the Union forces on the battlefield at Gettysburg are about 85 miles from the war department here in Washington , D . C . That distance in order to cover that distance on horseback would have taken a day or more hard riding by courier to get from one to another to deliver a message . An update on the battle . For example , With the technology on hand . In 1863 , George Meade , the commander of the army of the potomac can relay a message via a signal flag system and this is a spoiler to my hula trivia at the end of the day today , but he can relay a message from his headquarters at the Lister farmhouse via signal flag technology about a mile over to round top where a union signal station operating with smoke and with signal flags can convey a message another 20 miles southeast to Westminster Maryland to the army's railhead , where a telegraph operator can take that information , tap it out into a telegraph and the President and the Secretary of war will receive an update on the Battle of Gettysburg , literally within minutes of their development almost in real time . All right , well , great . So , um , a lot of technological advances that are going to definitely have an impact on the war . Now , as we're getting closer to the actual start of the civil war , uh , political tensions were growing . How is the army being used to help keep the peace during some of this ? And , you know , the one that comes to mind is john Brown's raid in Harpers Ferry . There are a number of cases in the , particularly in the 1850s , where Army soldiers will be front and center in the sectional conflict and the use of the army in quelling john Brown's raid at Harpers Ferry in 18 59 is one good example . Another really interesting example occurs further west and it occurs in Kansas and Missouri , where , which is really sort of ground zero for this sectional conflict . And so , Uh many folks have , have called this period bleeding Kansas because in the , in the aftermath of the Kansas Nebraska Act of 1854 , which said that in these western territories , the concept of popular sovereignty would apply so that the residents of each of these territories could elect in elections whether to come into the United States as slave or as free territories . This leads to an outbreak of political violence and armed sectional conflict between pro slavery and anti slavery factions and forces and communities on either side of the Kansas Nebraska board right in the middle of bleeding Kansas is Fort Leavenworth , which is the primary U . S . Army post on the frontier . It was established in 18 27 but in 18 50 for an officer named Edwin V . Sumner is a commander at Fort Leavenworth Kansas . He will go on to serve as a corps commander in the civil war in the Union Army . But at the time he's a colonel and his career is really emblematic of the army in the west and the tasks that was called on to to to perform during the period of bleeding Kansas , Sumner is responsible for executing treaties from separating the warring anti slavery and pro slavery factions on either side of the border and from actually intervening with army troops to stop violence . And so he is carrying out a role which we might refer to today as peacekeeping or his peace enforcement in Kansas and Missouri . During other parts of the 19th century . He stationed in Arizona and new Mexico and he's carrying out operations against the Apache who are rating in the , in the old , in the southwestern United States and who are contesting american expansion and so in addition to quelling things like the john brown raid army units and army soldiers are engaged in a lot of peacemaking and peacekeeping activities in the West . Yeah . And I think I've read the term constabulary basically as a police force uh , throughout the West without throughout american expansion , That's a good word to use . And it does pretty neatly sum up the army's role in the West before the Civil War as a constabulary force . Now in 1860 we have the election of Abraham Lincoln and this was really a catalyst that pushed states into succession . Um , can you describe what happened between november of 18 60 then Lincoln's inauguration in March of 18 61 . And just to remind folks that our inaugurations at that time were in March . They were not in january . As you said , the election of Abraham Lincoln called the Black Republican , by the pro slavery advocates of the south is the event which kicks off the process of secession and civil war in the immediate aftermath of the election , the so called Deep South states . So we're talking about Alabama Mississippi Louisiana begin to hold conventions where they will discuss at state level drafting an ordinance of secession and leaving the Union and so by december 18 60 the deep South States are leaving the Union and this process continues with the formation over the winter of 18 60 61 . The formation in Montgomery Alabama of the confederate states of America and the naming of jefferson Davis , the mississippian who had served as the Secretary of war under President franklin Pierce . In addition to being the West point graduate as the president of the Confederate states of America . And the move by these deep South states have seceded to begin to capture and take over federal installations in the Southern states and so they begin to take over forts , arsenals , army posts in these southern states and in most cases the federal troops , the US Army troops who are who are garrisoning these places will do one of two things . Either their leaders will sort of melt away and if they're from the southern states , they'll stay and they'll decide to resign from the U . S . Army or they will move with their units because they're given free passage to leave the confederate states and move to back to the north , back to the United States . And so this process happens through the winter of 18 60 61 . But by april the flash point for this process is Fort sumter , which of course is the , is the federal forts in charleston harbor , which the federal government , the Lincoln administration has elected to keep garrisoned as a show of force against the confederate states of America and the commander of the fort robert Anderson is ordered to maintain his position in the forts and so on . April 9th 10th 18 61 confederate forces or or south Carolina forces in charleston harbor will bombard and will capture fort sumter . In the aftermath of this process . Abraham Lincoln calls for 75,000 volunteers from the Northern States to form volunteer units to augment the regular army to quell the rebellion . And the call for these 1,775,000 volunteers is the the next domino to fall in that the so called Upper South States , which are the Carolinas Tennessee Arkansas Virginia will decide at that point to call their secession conventions . They will all in very close votes . In many cases , they will elect to secede from the Union and join the confederate states of America . So by the , by the late spring of 18 61 you have the 13 confederate states who have formed the C . S . A . As we would know it . And you mentioned Montgomery Alabama . So that was the first capital Of the Confederacy . When did they move that to Richmond ? So that was moved in April and May of 1861 , after Virginia secedes and joins the confederacy , the decision is made to move the capital from Montgomery Alabama to Richmond Virginia . Not only in an acknowledgement of Richmond's place as a major industrial center . Mhm and the center of Commerce for the upper south . But in terms of making a political statement about the unification of the southern states behind the concept of secession and the belief that they were going to form a new nation And how long did it take to raise these 75,000 troops . Just took a matter of weeks . And in fact the initial calls for volunteers in the north were so enthusiastic that many volunteers were turned away . Thousands of men were turned away from this initial 75 . But they did . They recruited their 75,000 . They formed some initial military forces in the capital . So you have a lot of of units moving from the Northern States into Washington , D . C . To form armies first for the protection of the capital . And so of course , in these early days in May and june of 18 61 the capital of the United States , Washington city , of course , is located just with the river separating it from the confederate states of America from alexandria Virginia ? From Northern Virginia from Arlington Heights . And so enemy territories staring at you from across the river . And so the first priority is to defend the capital and these these units will arrive from the Northern States . They'll begin to defend the capital . But in the course of May and june , the call really rises in the north to form an army to move out of the fortifications of Washington and to defeat the confederate army that's forming again in northern Virginia and to try to restore the union . What , Okay , And I think that gets to my next question is what was Lincoln school ? What what was winning to him again ? It's a matter of tremendous debate and discussion even today , the degree to which Lincoln's initial war aims were either the reunification of the nation and so the quelling of the rebellion and the and the process of bringing those seceded states back into the Union or whether the war was about the ending of slavery . And so Abraham Lincoln as the government , as the , as the president of a very diverse coalition of interests and states in the north has to tread a very fine political line at this stage because he has to balance an idea that he has in his mind . Uh that is clearly of abolitionist sentiment . And so Abraham Lincoln in in many public appearances and speeches frequently states in the run up to the war that the nation cannot exist with the institution of slavery as a as a perversion of the constitution as against everything that the nation stands for . But he is also mindful of the fact that a significant portion of the northern population either is not abolitionist and sentiment or sees nothing wrong with slavery . And so he's got to tread that fine line and he's got to keep the northern people united behind a common cause , which at least for the first phase of the war , that common cause is unity and reunification and the cause of the union . And so in most of his public statements and most of his messaging , if you will on behalf of the U . S . Government , the cause that motivates these men to enlist initially is to restore the union . And then we talked earlier about the commander of the Union army was Winfield scott and his plan , which has been nicknamed the anaconda Plan . Uh that was his initial strategy . But what about for the confederates ? Who who was leading their army ? I don't believe it was generally yet . And what was their strategy ? Yeah . We tend to read our history of the confederate states of America sort of backwards from robert E lee because he's such a major personality . But the initial formation of the confederate states of America and the confederate military force . It was a pretty chaotic process . And you can see in the stands to reason that you're forming a brand new nation , you're forming a new government out of really out of whole cloth where previous institutions did not exist And you're grappling with these ideas , one of which is what sort of military force is going to represent this new nation . And so the initial objectives in the wartime objective of the confederate states of America is to remain in being . It is to protect its sovereignty , to demonstrate its sovereignty to the world , to the other community of nations around the United States , but also to the north that they have formed a viable nation . And in this respect , it's interesting to go back and read about the initial stages of the war because both sides north and South very consciously make references to the revolutionary generation and the american revolution , both for their motivations and for their conduct of their national business , if you will , informing their national identity , but for the south , they're very conscious national identity is establishing their territorial integrity and their sovereignty and to do that , the South and southern leaders initially will want to demonstrate that they can use their military force to maintain inviolate the borders of the confederate states of America from military incursions by northern forces . And in a geographical sense , this means that along the Ohio River and the border between Kentucky and Tennessee in the north , along the Mississippi River in to the west , along the coast of the gulf of Mexico in the south and along the atlantic coast in the east , the borders of the confederacy become first and foremost in the minds of the confederacy , maintaining that territorial integrity and demonstrating that we can make a nation work . There's gonna be some significant challenges . I mean , if you look at the confederacy and now you look at the union , um , population wise , I think it was union had more population . Uh , they had the industrial base , whereas the south was agrarian . So , um , just put up some stiff challenges to the confederacy to , to defend . Yes , but I will , I will go back to that point I made about the american revolution because both sides of course , understood the nation's recent history and when you think about the american cause against the british empire . The situations are quite analogous and uh , in that case in the , in the american Revolutionary War , the american cause defeated a power that was much more militarily strong , had a worldwide industrial base , had an immense navy . All of the , the advantages that the north carries into the civil war were in many respects , replicated by the british and the american revolution . But we know how that turned out . And so this is a real case that helps the modern reader and thinker avoid the idea that the civil war was bound to turn out the way it was . Uh , and what we're talking about here is the issue of contingency in history and nothing in this in this aspect I believe is fore ordained the south had advantages of its own that they were fighting in many respects , they were fighting what I call a home game . So they're fighting to defend their own territory . They're operating with what we call interior lines and the ability to move resources interior to my own country . The ability to maintain my logistics and my supplies and my sport and my support interior inside my own territory shortened lines of communication . The very widespread and undeveloped nature of the american south , which really didn't support the movement of large armies . So you don't have a lot of significant . Of course we don't have interstate highways . We don't have major all weather roads , even the railroads that we have at the time in the deep South are relatively undeveloped . And so there are a lot of technological and logistical barriers that will hamper the Union cause as well . So there's reason to believe on both sides that the war can be won . Well , great , well , thank you so much . And before we close this episode , I wanna get back to our , our little piece here called who are trivia ? So do you have something of , who would trivia that you can share with the audience about this time period ? Yeah . And I'll , I'll go back to the spoiler that I mentioned , which is related to the technology of the Civil war , the so called wig wag or signal flag technology that leads to the development of the US Army's modern Signal corps . And the concept of long range communications really is the brainchild of one junior officer named Albert Meyer . And he is , uh , is an army officer , goes on to serve as the chief of the Signal Corps in the Union Army during the Civil War . But before the war is working in new york . And he's developing communications methods for the deaf and the blind . And he begins to use a technique of taps on a person's shoulder or hand to communicate information . And he translates this sort of tap system into a sort of code message system using flags where you move flags in a given predetermined pattern to , to convey bits of information . And so he will develop a technique for turning this , this flag communications method into a system that links these messages to telegraphic communications to morse code . Uh , And so the he links the two communications methods to really create long distance military communications and his first attempt to sell this technology to the federal government is during the franklin pierce administration and it fails . But during the administration of James Buchanan , right before the war , he tries again and he succeeds . And so the War Department takes another look at his pitch . If you will his sales pitch and says , this is something we want to invest and they add an appropriation in the War Department's budget of $2,000 to create the new Signal Corps to commission officers into a signal corps and to buy the equipment and a number of the officers who serve on Meyer's Signal Department staff go on to fame during the Civil War . One on the , in the confederate army is named Edward Porter alexander who is served initially as a confederate signal officer , but later as a staff officer uh in the Army of northern Virginia . And so he writes a very famous memoir about the war as well . But forced Meyer here in the national capital region , of course , is named for Albert Meier . Fantastic ! That's a great piece of trivia there . So thank you so much mr barry for your insights today about the early stages and the prelude to the Civil War . And if anyone wants to learn more about the civil war and or army history in general then I encourage you to explore our website at history dot army dot mil . And also we have a whole pamphlet series called the U . S . Army campaigns of the Civil war . Those are available from our website . Just go to our publications tab . They are available as free pdf downloads and if you want to experience army history every day then visit our social media sites on facebook twitter and instagram . And please join us every week on this podcast for more in depth discussions about army history as we cover topics from all eras of the US army history examining battles , soldier experiences , equipment , weapons and tactics . Thanks for joining us today on the United States Army history and Heritage podcast for the center of Military history , I'm lee Reynolds and until next time we're history . The views expressed in this podcast reflect those of the speakers and do not necessarily reflect the views policies or opinions of the U . S . Army or Department of Defense . For more information about the army's proud history and heritage , go to history dot army dot mil . Mhm