Lecture S16 -- The American Civil War
The Union Spring of 1862
The Invasion of New Mexico: In the Winter of 1861 and Spring of 1862, Confederates from Texas moved to seize New Mexico, much of which had once been claimed by Texas. General Sibley led several thousand men into New Mexico up the Rio Grande. His early successes met with disaster after a defeat at the hands of Colorado forces and the destruction of his supply train. His army came apart at the seams and was destroyed after Glorietta Pass in March 26-8, 1862. He stumbled, alone and drunk, back into Texas without an army.
Union Unleashed: Union forces now went onto the offensive. In Missouri, forces drove into Arkansas. Along the coastline, Roanoke Island fell to Union forces under General Burnside. And in the West, Grant launched his offensive against the Confederate Center, while Thomas moved against southeastern Kentucky.
The Indefensible Front: Albert Sidney Johnson, Confederate Commander of the West, had to defend a 1500 mile long front with only about 50,000 men. As a result, he had to post them in groups along the line, spreading them out too much.
Mill Springs: Union forces took over the rest of Kentucky
Forts Henry and Donelson: February 6-16, 1862. Grant and Foote conducted a joint Naval-Army operation against the forts and took them, cracking open the center of the Confederate line of defense. Nashville now fell to Union forces.
Pea Ridge: 6 Mar 1862 - 8 Mar 1862. Confederate forces under Earl Van Dorn, despite outnumbering and surprising a Union army led by Samuel Curtis, completely bungle everything and are sent running home.
Shiloh: April 6-7, 1862. AS Johnson concentrated his forces, got reinforcements, then moved to counterattack Grant at Shiloh. Grant: 49,000. Johnson and Beauregard: 44,0000. He caught Grant by surprise and drove his forces in disorder, but the Confederates got jumbled up due to a poor battle order, and the Union forces rallied. Then reinforcements led by General Buell arrived (17,000) and they drove the Confederates back.
Halleck Blows Their Chance: Unfortunately, Halleck was now given command in the West. He took a month to march 30 miles to Corinth, allowing the Confederates to recover and build forces to oppose Union advance. Union forces now spent months piddling around, accomplishing little.
New Orleans: April-May, 1862. Union naval forces now stormed into New Orleans, cutting off one of the best ports and trade cities of the South.
The Peninsular Campaign (March-July 1862): Meanwhile, McClellan (121,000) finally moved into the Peninsula to the southeast of Richmond and began to advance. He moved like a glacier—slow, but relentless, creeping up to the very gates of Richmond. General John Magruder used a mix of defensive lines and theatrical bluffs to slow him down for weeks. A counter-attack at Seven Pines (May 31, 1862) sent Joe Johnson to the hospital, but failed to stop McClellan. 55,000 Confederates tried to fight 33,000 men from McClellan's III and IV Corps, but many of them got lost in the woods and the attack was bungled. McClellan is now knocking at the gates of Richmond.
Summer-Fall 1862: Confederate Counter-Attack
Robert E. Lee Ascendant: Robert E. Lee was appointed to command the Army of Northern Virginia. His military reputation was at its nadir, but he would soon turn things around.
The Valley Campaign (March 23, 1862-June 9, 1862): Stonewall Jackson took his 17,000 men to the Shenandoah Valley and began a famous campaign where he kept 50,000 Union soldiers tied up and panicked Lincoln and Stanton, who now pulled troops from McClellan and sent them to form an army under General John Pope. Stonewall then gave them the slip and returned to Richmond to help Lee.
The Seven Days: Lee now launched a series of attacks in June 25-July 1, 1862, which drove McClellan into a panic. McClellan fled to the James River. This happened despite the fact that Lee’s subordinates constantly bungled following his orders. Also, Stonewall Jackson was tired from the Valley Campaign and mostly useless.
Second Bull Run: Leaving a force to cover the capital, Lee moved north and took out Pope’s army at Second Bull Run (August 29-30), destroying it and forcing McClellan to leave the Peninsula to cover the capital.
Overreach—Antietam (September 17, 1862): Lee now grew overconfident and moved into Maryland, hoping to resupply his men and leave the Virginia harvest undisturbed. Contemptuous of McClellan, he spread his men out too much. Unfortunately, McClellan found Lee’s marching orders and launched an attack. Lee barely managed to concentrate his men in time, and then stupidly stuck around to fight. Only McClellan’s bungling prevented Lee’s destruction. Lee fled back to Virginia and Lincoln fired McClellan. Bloodiest day of the Civil War: Union—12,401 casualties (2,108 killed). Confederate: 10,316 (1546 killed) McClellan's victory leads to Emancipation Proclamation.
Western Counterattack:
Use of Railroads: General Bragg, seeing he couldn’t retake Corinth and that Chattanooga was in danger, used railroads to consolidate his men and move to Eastern Tennessee. Working with General Kirby Smith, he launched an incursion into Kentucky.
Kentucky Does Not Rise: Bragg and Smith expected Kentucky to rise, just as Lee hoped Maryland would. But Kentuckians were reluctant to support the Confederacy.
Perryville (8 Oct 1862): Bragg (22,000) and Buell (16,000) fight a tied battle, but Bragg ultimately retreats. This ends any hope for the Confederacy in Kentucky, but Bragg has basically ensured the Union gained little ground in the west during the rest of 1862.
Emancipation and Black Soldiers
War for the Union: Initially, the war was sold as a war to preserve the Union, not to abolish slavery. Some slave states stayed loyal.
Jumping the Gun: Some Union commanders got over enthusiastic and kept emancipating slaves, such as General Fremont in Missouri. This had to be suppressed.
Confiscation Act of 1862: This act ordered the seizure of land from disloyal Southerners and the confiscation of their slaves.
Antietam: Lincoln had, for a while, been thinking of striking at the South by declaring its slaves emancipated, so as to encourage slave resistance in the South and to help insure no foreign intervention. Antietam gave him the cover he needed—it wouldn’t look like a desperation move.
Emancipation Proclamation: The Emancipation Proclamation freed all slaves as of January 1, 1863, who were resident in areas still in rebellion. It effectively freed no slaves until those territories could be retaken. Nonetheless, it made abolitionists happy, made the English public very resistant to helping the South, and ensured Southerners would have more reason to fear their slaves.
Black Soldiers:
Numbers: 180,000 soldiers, 20,000 sailors. 80% were ex-slaves
Hardships: Black soldiers were often denied the chance to prove themselves in combat, and generally were paid less.
Life of the Soldier: Food
Union Rations: “"In 1861, the standard daily ration in the Union army was based on the assumption that not all required ingredients would be available at all times and places. As a result, it operated on an equivalent or what some called the "lieu therof" or the "or" system... Each day a soldier ought to be issued three-fourths of a pound of pork "or" bacon "or" one and one quarter pounds of fresh "or" salt beef...His bread ration was to be eighteen ounces of fresh bread or flour or three-fourths of a pound of hardtack or one and one quarter pounds of cornmeal. Additionally, each 100-man company was to share eight quarts of peas or beans or ten pounds of rice, ten pounds of coffee or one and a half pounds of tea, fifteen pounds of sugar, four quarts of vinegar, and two quarts of salt. In 1861 the Confederate War Department adopted precisely the same ration allowance as the old United States prewar, execpting that it recognized the scarcity of coffee and sugar by reducing those from ten pounds of coffee to six and from fifteen pounds of sugar to twelve. In any event the Southern commissary was rarely able to provide either of those items or those quantities after 1861, or at any distance from principal commissary and transport centers...In 1863, responding to the rigors of campaigning, the Union War Department revised the ration to...[for every 100 rations] ten pounds of green coffee beans or eight pounds of roasted beans, or one and one half pounds of tea..." ”(Food Timeline—Civil War Coffee), http://www.foodtimeline.org/foodbeverages.html#civilwarcoffee)
Confederate Rations: In theory the same as the union; in practice, the Confederacy struggled to keep its men fed. The Confederates turned to food substitution techniques: “Ingenious substitutes were being tried: parched wheat, rye, corn, peanuts, acorns, sweet potatoes, and persimmon, okra, and watermelon seeds were being made into fake coffee. Sassafras roots and holly, orange, sage, and blackberry leaves masqueraded as tea. Maypops and pomegranates turned into "lemonade." Vinegar was made into apple cider, molasses, honey, and persimmons, figs, Mayapples, and beets. Beer was brewed using corn, potatoes, sassafras, persimmons, and spruce or pine needles. ” (“Desert Storm Recalls Civil War Food Woes, in http://www.foodhistory.com/foodnotes/leftovers/dstorm.htm)
Scavenging: Soldiers tended to scavenge extra food from the countryside. Some commanders cracked down on this, others encouraged it and some organized it and methodically pillaged the countryside in order to get fresh food. Stonewall Jackson's men once captured an entire Union supply depot during the Second Bull Run Campaign and made off with huge amounts of alcohol, canned foods, oysters, and all sorts of luxuries and had to burn the rest. (They burned 2 million ration allotments!) Sherman's March to the Sea methodically stripped a sixty mile swathe across Georgia of all food.
The Sutler: Every army had several men who traveled with it, licensed by the army, who provided higher quality food if you could pay; officers and men wishing to splurge could buy higher quality food, canned food, desserts, and even clothing. Many went heavily into debt for luxuries; at times, annoyed by the high prices, they would pillage the sutlers. (“Feeding Billy Yank”, http://www.qmfound.com/feeding_billy_yank.htm)
Coffee: Confederate soldiers rarely had access to real coffee; they had to improvise substitutes, such as okra, dried sweet potatoes or carrots, acorns, chicory seeds, and so on. Union soldiers received a coffee ration, but had to grind their own beans most of the time. Every 100 men received 10 pounds of coffee beans or 1.5 pounds of tea each day.
Hardtack: The standard bread ration was hardtack, a kind of biscuit which resembles a giant saltine cracker. Hardtack tended to become very stale if kept for too long. “Soldiers were usually allowed six to eight crackers for a three-day ration. There were a number of ways to eat them- plain or prepared with other ration items. Soldiers would crumble them into coffee or soften them in water and fry the hardtack with some bacon grease. One favorite soldier dish was salted pork fried with hardtack crumbled into the mixture. Soldiers called this "skillygallee", and it was a common and easily prepared meal.” (“American Civil War Recipes”, in http://americancivilwar.com/tcwn/civil_war/civil_war_cooking.html)
Johnnycake: Johnnycake was a kind of biscuit made with butter or bacon grease, salt, water, and cornmeal, favored by Confederates when they could get it. Sugar was added when available. It was usually baked fresh to eat.
Fresh Bread: Hard tack was replaced by fresh baked bread during periods of stationary camping when there was time to build ovens. During the siege of Richmond, for example, the Union Army had fresh bread.
The Beef Ration: Soldiers were usually issued salt pork or salt beef; it was usually oversalted and more easily eaten in a stew if there was time to cook. When possible, armies drove herds of cattle and would periodically butcher some of them to provide fresh meat before important occasions such as battles.
Scurvy: A diet of salt pork, hardtack, coffee, and sugar was not exactly the most nutritious diet ever. It especially lacked Vitamin C. When possible, soldiers were issued dehydrated vegetables; you mixed it with water and ended up with vegetable mash. Soldiers hated it. Vegetables which would keep so long as they were kept dry (In 1863, 30 pounds of potatoes per hundred men was added to the standard ration), or canned and other processed vegetables were preferred.
Onions: Onions were not an everyday item but were appreciated not just for their taste but also for their use in treating powder burns.
Canning: In 1860, Jacob Solomon invented a new method to sterilize cans used in canning food. This moved the time needed from 5 hours to one hour, vastly speeding production. Canned foods would become a crucial part of the rations of Civil War Soldiers. Certain products still sold today originated during the Civil War; production of canned goods multiplied by a factor of six during the Civil War:
Underwood Deviled Ham
Lea and Perrins Worcestershire Sauce
Borden's Condensed Milk
Van Camp's Pork and Beans
McIlhenny Company's Tabasco Sauce
Cooking: Five men out of every 100 man unit would be designated cooks, excused from other camp chores and given the job to figure out some palatable way to cook whatever had been issued to the unit. This tended to mean stew.