An Alternate Take on the ACW--a Canuck's Point of View

[Stauffenberg]

This discussion started in another thread when Yours Truly wandered far off topic. I am restarting it here for those interested. If BattleVonWar would re-post his reactions to my post here I would be grateful.

My divergent post (with a few editorial changes):

Davis was an outstanding asset for the South in whipping an army together (with Cooper and Lee) out of nothing early on, vs the fumbling amateur Lincoln (but a calculated and steady learner as time would show). But Davis badly miscalculated the effect that denying "King Cotton" to Europe would have. He also sent over diplomats to Europe who were in over their heads and therefore ineffectual.

If he was too aggressive with the Euros, he was too passive aggressive with the gathering Yankee behemoth to the north. But he didn't mix well with intellectual equals, although he was always a true friend indeed to cover your back if you had his support. What was lacking in the South was a round table of seminal thinkers, headed by Davis, to deal with specific points like the embargo. Instead you had a very techy President attempting to coerce and cajole the states into supporting higher aims, whilst micro-managing the Secretary of Defense position on top of it--a workaholic suffering migraines attempting to do the impossible. Really it was the worst of possible jobs to end up with, given the inbuilt oxymoron of "States rights" vs a centralized federal command that was attempting to fight a war of liberation against the Lincoln tyranny of rule by force--submit or be crushed, to the point of burning down civilian farms and crops--scorched earth--which can surely be considered "war crimes." But Abe was getting pretty desperate by '64.

Davis, confronted by intellectual equals in his office arguing for an immediate all-out assault on the North (the fantasist Beauregard did from the get-go, but Lee was no fantasist), would have had to realize the inevitable early on and show the North he meant business with repeated invasions. Most of the best generals in the previous federal Army had gone South, and were leading men with superb élan. Green, both sides were green, as Lincoln said to McDowell, but the South had the best generals immediately in play. Lee was ready to do this in a heartbeat; the other variant was Longstreet's Long War of defensive attrition. War is politics by other means and Davis needed to understand this but was overwhelmed with the minutiae of a new presidential office and fractious state governors. The moment was lost. Lee was a far better politician than Davis I submit in understanding this about the war, hence his two northern invasions, which he pushed for himself.

It was this inbuilt dilemma that finally undid things. The wonder of it all is that they fought so hard and for so long--no other nation in modern history has seen such a high percentage of their men killed and maimed in a drawn-out war--no, not even Britain, France, Russia or Germany in WW I. The flower of enlistable men was cut down defending their new country, and some (like myself) would argue that the US lost a chivalrous (if perhaps misguided in a number of ways) part of their national spirit in pursuing total war against one's own people.

It was decimation, no other word for it. Furthermore, the Franco-Prussian War fought 15 years later, did not see either side stoop to the depths that Lincoln went to in giving Sheridan and Sherman carteblanche to pursue a complete scorched earth policy, pitilessly inflicted upon southern non-combatant civilians. The casualty figures for the South were horrendous. The precedent of "total war" was a pernicious doctrine unleashed; and therefore note Sheridan was sent out West after the war to visit genocide upon First Nation peoples, having learned his trade in the Shenandoah.

Lincoln's final victory was Pyrrhic. A very Yankee outcome: "NN had to be destroyed in order to save it."

I am sure this point of view will not be popular for some here, but there you have it.

[khbynum]

Lee always believed that Davis was the best choice for the job, or at least said so. But then, he was raised in a culture of military subservience to civilian authority. I think my country lost a lot of things in the Civil War, but at least we didn't lose that.

If the South had structured a government fashioned on the Federal it would have negated many of its fundamental principles. States Rights was not an oxymoron, but hardly a viable solution to a new nation fighting for its independence. Davis was a proud, even haughty man, but unlike his opponent not enough of a politician to put results before principles. Lee was the only field general he respected other than Bragg, so your "round table of thinkers" never happened, nor was it likely to given Davis' ego.

The South did invade the North three times (Kentucky 62, Maryland 62 and Pennsylvania 63) and got whipped each time. I prefer the Longstreet Plan.

As for the way the North conducted the war, no one can claim the South inflicted anything like the devastation the North did. Jackson proposed such a course but never was in a position to implement it. Jubal Early burned Chambersburg. Compare that with Sherman, Sheridan and Hunter, all authorized and encouraged by the Federal government. They would have won anyway, without deliberately destroying the livlihood of civilians. By some estimates, as many as a quarter of military-age Southern men were killed in the war. I have read that the population structure of some Southern states didn't return to national normals until some time in the 1920s.

The cost? I've gotten into trouble on this forum before because I criticized a sainted American president and probably will do so now. How do you balance 600,000 dead white men and 68,000 dead black men vs. generations of black slavery and decades more to come if the war wasn't fought? The radical abolitionists, who took over the country in that decade, said it was worth the cost. I beg to differ. One man could have changed it and he made the wrong choice.

Pyrrhic victory? Well, Lincoln changed forever the form of our government when he suspended habeas corpus, instituted the draft and Federal income tax and established the primacy of the Federal over the State governments. Where would we be, where would the world be, if the war hadn't been fought? I'll leave that to novelists, since I'm sure you've all thought about it.

[dinsdale]

It was decimation, no other word for it. Furthermore, the Franco-Prussian War fought 15 years later, did not see either side stoop to the depths that Lincoln went to in giving Sheridan and Sherman carteblanche to pursue a complete scorched earth policy, pitilessly inflicted upon southern non-combatant civilians. The casualty figures for the South were horrendous. The precedent of "total war" was a pernicious doctrine unleashed; and therefore note Sheridan was sent out West after the war to visit genocide upon First Nation peoples, having learned his trade in the Shenandoah.

Lincoln's final victory was Pyrrhic. A very Yankee outcome: "NN had to be destroyed in order to save it."

I am sure this point of view will not be popular for some here, but there you have it.

I don't understand why the North's conduct is not more heavily criticized. I'm sure there were isolated incidents of Southern troops committing crimes during their limited invasions of the north, there were attacks on civilian property by Confederate agents in New York, and there were requisitions paid for in Confederate currency, but there is no comparison to the wholesale policy of war crimes carried out in the name of the Union during the war, or it's extra-judicial handling of reconstruction.

History seems to be forgiving of conduct provided the 'right' side wins, we tend to gloss over unrestricted bombing, and unrestricted submarine warfare practiced by the allies during WW2.

The most surprising result of the war was that the United States healed as quickly and strongly as it did.

[tripax]

Thanks for moving this. I wanted to respond, but it seemed so off topic to do so that I felt it would be best to ask that it move. Basically, I wanted to make a couple points. One, to me the dispute about the causes and the meaning of the war is a big part of why so many people care about it. I'd love it if the war wasn't used as a justification of contemporary discrimination, but on the whole I would say that the more people learn about history and about the civil war the better.

Second, while I disagree with a lot of what was said, but I really don't know. I'm not a historian, but I trust the /AskHistorians forum on reddit, and considered copying posts from there answering questions related to Sherman being a war criminal or Lincoln being a neophyte as a war leader, but I don't think I should, since it isn't my knowledge or expertise. As BattleVonWar wrote, I appreciate the perspective.

I am working up a post about an area closer to my expertise (population health, disease, and mortality), I might post if I like it enough.

By the way, Lee and Grant's meeting after the war is discussed briefly in Lee: The Last Years by Charles Bracelen Flood. I really loved the book and like Lee more for having read it. I don't remember what it said about that meeting, however.

[Gray Fox]

"If we had freed the slaves, then seceded, this war never would have happened." Gen. Longstreet

Some of my ancestors owned slaves. At least one ancestor fought and died in the Union army. His freed slave was given his share of the family farm and our family name. I have respect for all of my family ancestors, white and black, Union soldier and slave owner.

Women's groups in the South after the war raised funds to decorate the graves of their fallen husbands, fathers and brothers. They paid for monuments to be erected at battlefields. They arranged for former soldiers to give speeches at annual rallies. They taught a generation of children about a "Noble Cause". The children grew up to become historians and politicians. For them, the pen may indeed be mightier than the sword...

The only right that Southern states had that Southerners thought was endangered by the Lincoln election was the right to own a black human being as property. By this I mean the right to sell someone to another slave owner so that a family was forever ripped apart. The right to chase an escaped slave with guns and bloodhounds like an animal. The right to drag that human being from freedom back into slavery. The right to prevent such attempts with a meciless whipping. That is the State "right" the South feared losing. Maine, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maryland, New York, Connecticut, Rhode Island, Vermont, Massachusetts, Illinois, Indiana and New Hampshire outlawed slavery decades before "Radical Republicans" even existed. People across the United States tried since the Revolutionary War to end slavery peacefully. Legal means were ignored by slave owners. As late as 1860, it was a boast in Texas that a shipload of new slaves could be brought in from Africa, even though this was against international law.

Imagine if your own family were to endure slavery for "just a few decades longer" until an alternative to war could be arranged.

[khbynum]

We both know it was a lot more complicated than that. Tariffs were stifling the Southern economy. Control of Congress was slipping away and with it the ability to steer the nation the way some Southerners wanted. Lincoln set about a war to restore the Union by force, not to free blacks from slavery. His own statements make that abundantly clear, if you bother to read them. I've made it repeatedly plain that, in my opinion, he was no more justified that George III. He only made the war a crusade against slavery when he saw public and Congressional support for his illegal war evaporating in the face of horrendous casualties and financial sacrifices. He was a politician, and a damned good one.

Imagine if your own family were to endure slavery for "just a few decades longer" until an alternative to war could be arranged.

You want me to come right out and say it? No, it wasn't worth it. Slavery would have died on its own, without killing all those young men and devastating a third of the country.

[Stauffenberg]

We both know it was a lot more complicated than that. Tariffs were stifling the Southern economy. Control of Congress was slipping away and with it the ability to steer the nation the way some Southerners wanted. Lincoln set about a war to restore the Union by force, not to free blacks from slavery. His own statements make that abundantly clear, if you bother to read them. I've made it repeatedly plain that, in my opinion, he was no more justified that George III. He only made the war a crusade against slavery when he saw public and Congressional support for his illegal war evaporating in the face of horrendous casualties and financial sacrifices. He was a politician, and a damned good one.



You want me to come right out and say it? No, it wasn't worth it. Slavery would have died on its own, without killing all those young men and devastating a third of the country.

I also take the view that slavery was as dead as the dodo, likely within decades anyway. If Lincoln had had a clear anti-slavery mandate in 1861, (he surely didn't, not by a long mile--and in fact was advocating blacks might be shipped back to Africa as an option) he might have applied Scott's Anaconda Plan and simply throttled the South economically with no attempted military invasions, gone ahead with immediate freedom and citizenry for those blacks who came to the North, financial incentives (and technology and workers) negotiated with southern agribusiness. political pressure for the Euros to boycott Southern slave cotton. Sort of an early embargo South Africa style... another historical what-if. But this is entirely moot anyhow as Lincoln chose a war of aggression and conquest long before he finally played the slavery card.

Rule by force, submit or be crushed, is about as anti-democratic as one could wish for if you are a federalist and don't care a jot for clearly fair democratic elections that see a huge part of the previous union massively reject your platform across the board, and not just some rebel movements in various areas--in fact a huge part of your previous union snapping off with 90%+ votes of the citizenry to do so. This surely puts the lie to your own claims of "democracy" and set a precedent, based upon errant hypocrisy, that continues to haunt you.

We went through something similar here in Canada with the Quebec referendum in 1995 and it was clear that if the people of Quebec had made that final vote for separation it would have happened. The final vote to secede was 49% YES, 51% NO: very close. But sending in the military to rule by force and "crush" the Quebecois majority voting to secede just wasn't in the cards.

Not relevant to contrast 1861 with recent history in this regard some might claim? History does not bear this out as the same scenario is playing out in Ukraine as we speak, where an aggressive federalist regime in Kiev not only refuses to negotiate with the "rebels" (or "terrorists" as they prefer to call them), it refuses to even acknowledge a duly elected leadership, just as Lincoln refused to recognize President Davis (but rushed to see his vacated office in Richmond asap after it was finally taken). Shelling civilian homes and markets in Donetsk is no different than torching the Shenandoah or Georgia--it is an attempt to terrorize civilians into ceasing their bid for complete separation from YOU. It invariably fails.

But no one doubts the canny abilities of Lincoln the politician. I might not entirely agree with Shelby Foote's claim that the war produced two sheer geniuses--Lincoln and Bedford Forrest--unless I can qualify the genius aspects of Lincoln as Machiavellian in nature. That said, a genius he surely was, and a brilliant rhetorician to boot. One needs to understand that he got the war he wanted, and almost lost it. He thought he had lost it in 1864, at least concerning his own political life. He had other options early on: he would not entertain them.

[Keeler]

Shelling civilian homes and markets in Donetsk is no different than torching the Shenandoah or Georgia--it is an attempt to terrorize civilians into ceasing their bid for complete separation from YOU. It invariably fails.

I must respectfully disagree with this for two reasons. While the Shenandoah Valley Burning and March to Sea were brutal, spread fear and lawlessness, and resulted in civilian deaths, both indirectly and directly, neither was conducted for the sake of killing civilians, as the indiscriminate shelling you refer to does. By the fall of 1864 the infrastructure of the Shenandoah and the Deep South, including railroads, farms, and plantations, were the only thing keeping Confederate armies in the field- armies that were inflicting and suffering tens of thousands of casualties. Union leadership came to the conclusion that only the total dismantling of that infrastructure would end the war and the mass killings on the battlefield. They understood this would not only deprive Southern armies of food for the 1865 campaigning season, but would force thousands of Confederate soldiers to return home to help with the spring planting. And this is the second reason I disagree with you, because the plan worked. In the winter of 1864-65, the letters pleading for Confederate soldiers to return home and help plant the spring crop became more frequent and desperate. Desertions increased rapidly in the late winter, not only because the civilian population could no longer support the Confederate military but also because the civilian population faced starvation if it had to plant without its slaves and its adult male population. The men had to go home, and enough did to bring the war to an end. This situation was not created without crimes, brutality, and it was terrifying to many who experienced it, but it is a different from the indiscriminate targeting of civilian populations (which groups on many different sides engaged in on a large scale in Appalachia, Missouri, and Kansas). I think it is worth pointing out that the destruction of Richmond was caused by evacuating Confederates. The only city Sherman destroyed was Atlanta, where Hood himself had ordered all public buildings and military assets to be destroyed. Sherman evacuated the city before burning down the business district, and spared the city's hospitals and churches. Again, this was not kind or gentle, but it is on a different plane than indiscriminate murder and pillaging. If his motivation was destruction for destruction's sake, Sherman could have easily destroyed Savannah. Yet he did not. Thus there must have been more to his decision-making than spreading terror and destruction. Such calculating behavior make may Sherman a better person or a worse one. I'm not arguing one way or the other, only suggesting we should interpret historical figures in the context of their own times. Ours are different, despite the similarities. There were heavy, deliberate shellings of populated cities during the war (Charleston, Vicksburg, and Fredricksburg (which was looted)) which come closer, but are not quite the same, as the example you cite.

One needs to understand that he got the war he wanted, and almost lost it. He thought he had lost it in 1864, at least concerning his own political life. He had other options early on: he would not entertain them.

I strongly disagree with this statement. Radicals camps on both sides, whose ideology had become entrenched for at least a generation, may have wanted, or at least did not wish to avoid, a war. Lincoln was not one of them. As you yourself point out, Lincoln was a moderate on the issue of the issue of containing and ending slavery. The problem was that, by 1860, a slim majority of white Southerners saw any position which supported any limitation of slavery as radical. Lincoln understood this. His words and actions consistently sought to avoid, and later to end, the war. Up to Sumter, he was careful to avoid provocative actions (although later there were actions which might have been mistakes, such as the call for volunteers which helped push Virginia and North Carolina into secession). His cabinet was moderate. Many of his top generals, especially early in war, were War Democrats. Even during his second inauguration, by which time hundreds of thousands had died, he sought reconciliation and spoke of the war as something one people was responsible for and which one people had suffered. Had he lived, it is almost certain the Radical Republicans would not have ascended to power and that Reconstruction, successful or not, would have been less punitive to the South. From the time he was elected until his death, he sought first to avoid a crisis, then end the war, and then to heal the nation's wounds.

It was a group of South Carolinians, not Lincoln, who chose to escalate the crisis by seceding. The only way Lincoln could have prevented this would have been to refuse to serve as President. To do so would have undermined the principle of American representative government. Lincoln can hardly be blamed for choosing not to do so. The issues of secession and Lincoln's conduct of the war are more open to interpretation, but none of his actions or words demonstrate any desire for a war to start or that he relished the war that did.

The Civil War was a war of ideology and principles, and to a degree was an existential one. Such wars are difficult to end without a total victory by one side, since neither side sees a compromise as an option. How could Lincoln have won the war without occupying the South, when the South refused to make peace under any other conditions than total victory or total defeat and when the latter was only possible through military occupation? There is no way there could have been an effective blockade of the Confederacy without extensive military action such as the seizing of forts and harbors. Even using force, it took until early 1865 to completely close down Southern ports and that was in conjunction with a massive land war. How harder would that task had been if hundreds of thousands of Southern men weren't dead, wounded, or fighting elsewhere? As to an international embargo, I don't believe its logical to assume European nations would cooperate with a United States of America that failed to enforce its sovereignty over roughly half its territory, especially when those European nations actively traded with the Confederacy and supported the Confederate Navy despitean active US military effort. And how would large numbers of unarmed slaves safely made it to the North without Northern occupation of Southern territory? Sherman literally destroyed the plantation system in the Deep South, and yet after the war former slaves found themselves part of the eerily similiar share-cropping system for nearly another century.

Lincoln wasn't a marble man. He made mistakes conducting the war. Late in the war his generals led brutal, destructive campaigns which ripped up and burned the South's agricultural economy but stopped short of wholesale slaughter. Their goal was to end the bloodshed and end it as quickly as possible, so that the process of healing could begin. In my opinion, the ends justified the means.

How much harder would attitudes had been with another year of war? How much more vengeance and hatred would another summer of Peterburgs and Atlantas have breed in the American people? These are questions worth considering when we evaluate the choices made in late 1864.

[tripax]

I wrote a long post (so long I've given it a new thread) about the question of the proportionality of the horrors of the civil war to the horrors of slavery. I'm posting it mostly as a question and not as an answer. I'd love to hear people's comments about my excess mortality argument there. At the same time, I'm looking forward to seeing continued discussion here and and am glad to read Keeler and Grey Fox present arguments I tend more to agree with.

[Stauffenberg]

Keeler, I'll attempt to clarify a few things that your very thoughtful response requires.

I must respectfully disagree with this for two reasons.
While the Shenandoah Valley Burning and March to Sea were brutal, spread fear
and lawlessness, and resulted in civilian deaths, both indirectly and
directly, neither was conducted for the sake of killing civilians, as the
indiscriminate shelling you refer to does.

This is very true and I had not meant to equate the two in that way. No one
would suggest that Lincoln and his High Command sought to indisciminately kill
southern civilians in that manner. That said, however, both do amount to the
same thing in terms of overall aim: destroy civilian infrastructure, terrorize
the inhabitants, and create refugees.

And this is the second reason I disagree with you, because the plan
worked. In the winter of 1864-65, the letters pleading for Confederate
soldiers to return home and help plant the spring crop became more frequent
and desperate. Desertions increased rapidly in the late winter, not only
because the civilian population could no longer support the Confederate
military but also because the civilian population faced starvation if it had
to plant without its slaves and its adult male population.

That's fine, and the logic of implementing it is sound to some degree... if
you consider the wholesale scorched earth assault on civilians to be an
acceptable tactic in a war waged upon your own people. I do not, but countries
in extremis must make their own choices.

Sherman could have easily destroyed Savannah. Yet he did not. Thus
there must have been more to his decision-making than spreading terror and
destruction. Such calculating behavior make may Sherman a better person or a
worse one. I'm not arguing one way or the other, only suggesting we should
interpret historical figures in the context of their own times.

I am not out to paint the major personalities of that war in black and white
terms (except perhaps Sheridan). Both Sherman and Grant went at war in a very
workmanlike manner and are not to be faulted for that for the most part.
Lincoln, who ordered the direct assault on civilian properties on a huge
scale, is another matter.

I strongly disagree with this statement. Radicals camps on both sides,
whose ideology had become entrenched for at least a generation, may have
wanted, or at least did not wish to avoid, a war. Lincoln was not one of
them. As you yourself point out, Lincoln was a moderate on the issue of the
issue of containing and ending slavery. The problem was that, by 1860, a slim
majority of white Southerners saw any position which supported any limitation
of slavery as radical. Lincoln understood this. His words and actions
consistently sought to avoid, and later to end, the war.

Yes he did rhetorically as he knew perfectly well the issue of blame was
acute in the impending hostilities. But I think it buys too much into the
Lincoln legend to surmise that he did not personally feel and believe that only a war
of conquest would bring the southern states back, and was waiting for the
hotheads in Charleston, with Sumter as the perfect bait, to start it. They
obligingly took this and Lincoln had his war.

Up to Sumter, he was careful to avoid provocative actions (although
later there were actions which might have been mistakes, such as the call for
volunteers which helped push Virginia and North Carolina into secession).

Yes, as I said he was careful to appear the non-aggressor, precisely because
the ongoing "battle for hearts & minds" was acute in the border states and
others that had not seceded as you note. However, what you call a "mistake" in
calling for volunteers I would submit clearly indicates his intentions--an
armed invasion to put down the rebellion. Note Governor Letcher of Virginia's
response to Cameron, U.S. Secretary of War that he supply troops for this
purpose, sent April 17th, 1861. He nails it on the head:

[INDENT]In reply to this communication, I have only to say that the militia of
Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or
purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States,
and a requisition made upon me for such an object -- an object, in my
judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the act of 1795 --
will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war,
and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has
exhibited towards the South. Respectfully, [/INDENT]
[my emphasis]

It was a group of South Carolinians, not Lincoln, who chose to
escalate the crisis by seceding. The only way Lincoln could have prevented
this would have been to refuse to serve as President. To do so would have
undermined the principle of American representative government. Lincoln can
hardly be blamed for choosing not to do so.

But this stands the situation on it's head. The Washington government no
longer was "representative" for almost the entire South, that's the point. I
disagree that Lincoln did not have other options.

Lincoln wasn't a marble man. He made mistakes conducting the war. Late
in the war his generals led brutal, destructive campaigns which ripped up and
burned the South's agricultural economy but stopped short of wholesale
slaughter. Their goal was to end the bloodshed and end it as quickly as
possible, so that the process of healing could begin. In my opinion, the ends
justified the means.

How much harder would attitudes had been with another year of war? How much
more vengeance and hatred would another summer of Peterburgs and Atlantas have
breed in the American people? These are questions worth considering when we
evaluate the choices made in late 1864.

Many thoughtful points and I very much appreciate it. I would simply rephrase
your last rhetorical questions: What possible initiatives were available in
1860 and '61 to avoid the war entirely? Possibilities that Lincoln did not
wish to entertain? Slavery was going the way of the dodo. The South had their
temper tantrum and just wanted to be left alone. A slow phasing out of the
slave-based Southern economy, combined with economic incentives, and above-all
a federal level set of negotiations between the US and CSA with a view towards
eventual reuinion was one option. There were others I am sure, that might
have had the same chance to avoid the historical bloodbath that ensued.

[Stauffenberg]

I wrote a long post (so long I've given it a new thread) about the question of the proportionality of the horrors of the civil war to the horrors of slavery. I'm posting it mostly as a question and not as an answer. I'd love to hear people's comments about my excess mortality argument there. At the same time, I'm looking forward to seeing continued discussion here and and am glad to read Keeler and Grey Fox present arguments I tend more to agree with.

Tripax, I'll be pleased to see your thoughts on that.

[Gray Fox]

My father loaded bombs onto B-17's that dropped the payloads onto German cities full of non-combatant civilians. One might suppose that Germans will hate us for 150 years...but they don't. I know because my wife is German. My daughters were born in Germany. The German people were liberated from a horrible, inhuman regime by our terrible actions. The Americans in the South, white and black, were liberated from the horrible, inhuman regime of slavery by terrible actions too. Most Germans weren't connected with atrocities against what the Nazis considered to be inferior peoples. Most Southerners didn't mistreat hundreds or thousands of their slaves, because they didn't own any. The people who ran the slave industry were firmly convinced that this "dodo" was still very much alive and absolutely refused to the nth degree to resolve this issue legally.

The war wasn't about Lincoln or Sherman or Anaconda plans. People in the hills of Kentucky, the farms of Ohio and the factories of the Northeast were just morally sick to their atoms about this despicable blight on the fabric of our society. Literature, pictures of the backs of whipped former slaves and the personal accounts of freedmen who had escaped with the Underground Railroad were part of the mindset of ordinary people who decided to risk their lives to do something that was unmistakeably right. The horrible actions of the slave industry radicalized the Northern public long before there was a Republican party. No "slavery appreciation day!" or "slave of the month" ever existed because slaves were treated like animals. The French Canadians and the people of South Africa weren't the legal property of the regimes that they despised.

No group ever had a right to rebel against our Federal Government. The Federal Government activated several militias to suppress the Whiskey Rebellion as early as 1791. The Southern politicians fully knew what they were risking by secession. We respect debate and legal change, but not armed rebellion. The attack on the garrison of Fort Sumter was an act of war any where in the world. A few thousand Southerners who owned several million slaves gave the North every reason possible to fight a civil war. Too many people in the south suffered for a regime's sins that they did not share.

"Let us have peace" President U.S. Grant

[havi]

I also take the view that slavery was as dead as the dodo, likely within decades anyway. If Lincoln had had a clear anti-slavery mandate in 1861, (he surely didn't, not by a long mile--and in fact was advocating blacks might be shipped back to Africa as an option) he might have applied Scott's Anaconda Plan and simply throttled the South economically with no attempted military invasions, gone ahead with immediate freedom and citizenry for those blacks who came to the North, financial incentives (and technology and workers) negotiated with southern agribusiness. political pressure for the Euros to boycott Southern slave cotton. Sort of an early embargo South Africa style... another historical what-if. But this is entirely moot anyhow as Lincoln chose a war of aggression and conquest long before he finally played the slavery card.

Rule by force, submit or be crushed, is about as anti-democratic as one could wish for if you are a federalist and don't care a jot for clearly fair democratic elections that see a huge part of the previous union massively reject your platform across the board, and not just some rebel movements in various areas--in fact a huge part of your previous union snapping off with 90%+ votes of the citizenry to do so. This surely puts the lie to your own claims of "democracy" and set a precedent, based upon errant hypocrisy, that continues to haunt you.

We went through something similar here in Canada with the Quebec referendum in 1995 and it was clear that if the people of Quebec had made that final vote for separation it would have happened. The final vote to secede was 49% YES, 51% NO: very close. But sending in the military to rule by force and "crush" the Quebecois majority voting to secede just wasn't in the cards.

Not relevant to contrast 1861 with recent history in this regard some might claim? History does not bear this out as the same scenario is playing out in Ukraine as we speak, where an aggressive federalist regime in Kiev not only refuses to negotiate with the "rebels" (or "terrorists" as they prefer to call them), it refuses to even acknowledge a duly elected leadership, just as Lincoln refused to recognize President Davis (but rushed to see his vacated office in Richmond asap after it was finally taken). Shelling civilian homes and markets in Donetsk is no different than torching the Shenandoah or Georgia--it is an attempt to terrorize civilians into ceasing their bid for complete separation from YOU. It invariably fails.

But no one doubts the canny abilities of Lincoln the politician. I might not entirely agree with Shelby Foote's claim that the war produced two sheer geniuses--Lincoln and Bedford Forrest--unless I can qualify the genius aspects of Lincoln as Machiavellian in nature. That said, a genius he surely was, and a brilliant rhetorician to boot. One needs to understand that he got the war he wanted, and almost lost it. He thought he had lost it in 1864, at least concerning his own political life. He had other options early on: he would not entertain them.

WHAT are u comparing russian invasion to ukraine at cw?! are u insane there isn't nothing same on that the ukraine elections where made by gunpoint ant these "legal donbassians" are bombing cities killing civilians and shooting the pows so thats a off topic but get your facts right!

[Keeler]

Keeler, I'll attempt to clarify a few things that your very thoughtful response requires.



This is very true and I had not meant to equate the two in that way. No one
would suggest that Lincoln and his High Command sought to indisciminately kill
southern civilians in that manner. That said, however, both do amount to the
same thing in terms of overall aim: destroy civilian infrastructure, terrorize
the inhabitants, and create refugees.

I hear your clarification, but I would argue there they are not the essentially the same. In certain cases the results were similar, but the methods were different. During the Civil War official policies which authorized or condoned military actions against civilians were limited to property destruction; indiscriminate killing, even when justified as collateral damage, was not acceptable. Even in the case of the disgraceful, evil event known as the the Sand Creek Massacre there were repercussions (though far, far too light) for the perpetrators- who it might be pointed, were not acting with approval from the government. Granted some of those official policies created situations in which civilian populations suffered immensely, and were responsible for civilian deaths, and that the suffering was calculated. However, as much as we like to think of the Civil War as the first "Total War" it was not. The practice of uprooting, or enslaving, or butchering, or otherwise mistreating civilian populations to break a people's will to fight is as old as humanity itself. The Civil War is unique because it occurred at time when Western warfare was becoming mechanized, with civil society's role in warfare- whether supporting the war effort or being or being caught up in it- becoming mechanized as well. During the Civil War the scale of civil disruption and displacement reflected these changes, and therefore they were extensive. But in the end the policies which condoned destruction of civilian infrastructure and property were limited in scope. I could go on, but rather than risk rambling I'll suggest anyone interested read this article at the Civil War Trust about Sherman's March to the Sea.

That's fine, and the logic of implementing it is sound to some degree... if
you consider the wholesale scorched earth assault on civilians to be an
acceptable tactic in a war waged upon your own people. I do not, but countries
in extremis must make their own choices.

I am not out to paint the major personalities of that war in black and white
terms (except perhaps Sheridan). Both Sherman and Grant went at war in a very
workmanlike manner and are not to be faulted for that for the most part.
Lincoln, who ordered the direct assault on civilian properties on a huge
scale, is another matter.

Sherman's Georgia and Carolina Campaigns, which I think we can all agree were the largest actions taken against civilians during the Civil War, were Sherman's ideas. He had to convince Grant, who presumably had to obtain Lincoln's approval. The same is true concerning Sheridan and the Shenandoah. So it doesn't make sense to absolve Sherman and Grant and criticize Lincoln. Lincoln's administration did or condoned many actions of questionable legality- the suspension of habeas corpus, the seating of pro-Union leaders and legislatures in border states, the seizure of personal assets- but there is little evidence he personally created or directed the policies which targeted civilians. If you have any evidence of that, I would be interested in seeing it. As President, Lincoln is ultimately responsible for the implementation of such policies, but there is a difference between adopting policies which evolve out of the context of war and provoking a war to implement pre-determined policies, as you appear to be arguing.

Yes he did rhetorically as he knew perfectly well the issue of blame was
acute in the impending hostilities. But I think it buys too much into the
Lincoln legend to surmise that he did not personally feel and believe that only a war
of conquest would bring the southern states back, and was waiting for the
hotheads in Charleston, with Sumter as the perfect bait, to start it. They
obligingly took this and Lincoln had his war.

I have never come across anything that suggests Lincoln believed the only option was a war of conquest. On the contrary, he believed the vast majority of the Southern population opposed secession and that a general war was avoidable. However, he also felt he had to uphold the sovereignty of the United States. The situation in Charlesston was not created by Lincoln; he inherited it. It was not under Lincoln, but his predecessor James Buchanan, during which the status quo in Charleston Harbor was established. In fact, Charleston batteries fired on the Star of the West as it approached Sumter with supplies on January 9, two months before Lincoln took office.

In early April Lincoln learned Sumter was running out of supplies. He thus faced the choice of either allowing the fort to surrender, which would be a de facto recognition of the Confederacy, or attempting to supply it, which might provoke a war. What sometimes gets lost in discussing this period is that the Confederates also faced a choice: allow the fort to be resupplied, which would have maintained the status quo but underminded their sovereignty, or block the resupply, which might provoke a war. Under these circumstances, it's hardly fair to call it Lincoln's war. There are far more reasonable actions to criticize him for.

Yes, as I said he was careful to appear the non-aggressor, precisely because
the ongoing "battle for hearts & minds" was acute in the border states and
others that had not seceded as you note. However, what you call a "mistake" in
calling for volunteers I would submit clearly indicates his intentions--an
armed invasion to put down the rebellion. Note Governor Letcher of Virginia's
response to Cameron, U.S. Secretary of War that he supply troops for this
purpose, sent April 17th, 1861. He nails it on the head:

[INDENT]In reply to this communication, I have only to say that the militia of
Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or
purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States,
and a requisition made upon me for such an object -- an object, in my
judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the act of 1795 --
will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war,
and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has
exhibited towards the South. Respectfully, [/INDENT]
[my emphasis]

Letcher's letter reflects his interpretation of Lincoln's actions, not Lincoln's own motivations. The act Letcher refers to is the Militia Act of 1795, which Lincoln used to call up the the 75,000 volunteers. The proclamation he issued read as follows:

BY THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:

A PROCLAMATION

WHEREAS the laws of the United States have been, for some time past, and now are opposed, and the execution thereof obstructed, in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by law.

Now, therefore, I, ABRAHAM LINCOLN, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union, to the aggregate number of seventy-five thousand, in order to suppress said combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed.

The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department.

I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs already long enough endured. I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event, the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.

And I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid to disperse, and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within twenty days from this date.

Deeming that the present condition of public affairs presents an extraordinary occasion, I do hereby, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution, convene both Houses of Congress. Senators and Representatives are therefore summoned to assemble at their respective chambers, at twelve o'clock, noon, on Thursdays the fourth day of July next, then and there to consider and determine such measures as, in their wisdom, the public safety and interest may seem to demand.

By the President:ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Secretary of State WILLIAM H. SEWARD

(Emphasis Added)

Lincoln's call for volunteers was not intended as a large-scale invasion of the South. Rather, it had the limited goal of repossessing the government property already seized by the Southern states- which incidentally, would have gone a long way to your proposal of blockading the South. It also gave the Southern states 20 more days to back down. Now I realize that both sides realized that this was another step towards a general war, but it argues against Lincoln, or anyone with any authority in his administration, already planning, or even anticipating, a large scale invasion and occupation at this point in time.

But this stands the situation on it's head. The Washington government no
longer was "representative" for almost the entire South, that's the point. I
disagree that Lincoln did not have other options.

The point is disputable. In many states articles of secession passed by narrow margins, and geographical regions such as Appalachia were opposed to secession. In any event the issue of secession was not determined by popular vote, but rather by delegates at special conventions. The Lincoln administration had some right to claim it represented the interests of the large anti-secessionist population living in the South, especially when it considered the state secession conventions as illegitimate. Whether he was right or wrong, Lincoln perception's was that a) the secessionist represented a minority of Southerns and b) their actions were un-Constitutional. Whether they were right or wrong, the secessionists believed exactly the opposite. Given the divergence between these two positions, there was little room for political maneuvering.

Many thoughtful points and I very much appreciate it. I would simply rephrase
your last rhetorical questions: What possible initiatives were available in
1860 and '61 to avoid the war entirely? Possibilities that Lincoln did not
wish to entertain? Slavery was going the way of the dodo. The South had their
temper tantrum and just wanted to be left alone. A slow phasing out of the
slave-based Southern economy, combined with economic incentives, and above-all
a federal level set of negotiations between the US and CSA with a view towards
eventual reuinion was one option. There were others I am sure, that might
have had the same chance to avoid the historical bloodbath that ensued.

Well, what possibilities do you see? Personally, I don't believe there were any. I do not take the view that slavery was close to ending. It was certainly evolving, but as I pointed out earlier the plantation system, despite being destroyed by the war, was reconstituted after it as the share-cropping system. Now share-cropping was different from slavery to be sure, but at their cores both systems constituted a socio-economic hierarchy in which black Americans were not equal partners of society. Even if slavery ended gradually without war, a similar system would have replaced it. This is important because the Southern conception of liberty and freedom was rooted in hierarchy, and conflicted with how other groups of Americans thought of liberty and freedom. Therefore, I don't believe that a military conflict was avoidable. There were major, I would argue existential, philosophical and ideological causes of the Civil War, which were both rooted in and manifested by slavery- but which would have existed regardless of whether slavery itself was an issue of controversy.

I also don't think the South was having a tantrum. This I believe, was also Lincoln's mistake. Secessionists were earnest in their desire for independence, and while some actions by the Lincoln administration hardened their resolve, I think their minds were pretty determined before he was even elected. Remember, at least a generation had been exposed to radical rhetoric from all camps. That's not to say that secession might have failed without war, but at what cost? The precedent for seceding would have been set. The rule of law would have been undermined, and there was a distinct fear of "Balkanization" and all the bloodshed and chaos that term has come to symbolize. The experiences of Kansas, Missouri, and other border areas suggest that fear was not unwarranted. And then there are the international concerns. What would prevent a state from seceding in the middle of a future war? As we saw, European powers were not shy about taking advantage of a weakened US to seize power in the Western Hemisphere. If France had been successful in Mexico, would they have looked to the American West, which had only been taken Mexico 20 years earlier? What would have prevented Great Britain from returning to the issue of the Pacific Northwest? I am not saying these concerns justify the bloodshed of the Civil War, but they are important things to consider when looking at the decisions made in the winter of 1860-61.

I recommend reading the Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914. It is an exhausting, almost day-by-day chronicle of how the leaders of Europe made the decision to plunge into WWI. It might be dry for some, and is not relevant to the Civil War, but the author's approach and the questions he asks/attempts to answer could be redirected to examine how Americans found themselves facing each other in Charleston Harbor in 1861.

[dinsdale]

I must respectfully disagree with this for two reasons. While the Shenandoah Valley Burning and March to Sea were brutal, spread fear and lawlessness, and resulted in civilian deaths, both indirectly and directly, neither was conducted for the sake of killing civilians, as the indiscriminate shelling you refer to does. By the fall of 1864 the infrastructure of the Shenandoah and the Deep South, including railroads, farms, and plantations, were the only thing keeping Confederate armies in the field- armies that were inflicting and suffering tens of thousands of casualties.

I disagree with this logic. Although not directly shooting civilians, condemning them to starve to death either through directly destroying their crops or destroying the economic fabric needed in order to buy food, it amounts to the same thing. Britain used the same excuse for their bombing campaign; we didn't directly bomb civilians, we were bombing their houses and factories. While there are some differences between first and second degree murder, both are murder.

Further, if one accepts indirect civilian death as a means to lower casualties on the front line, where is the limit? What ratio of civilians killed to soldiers saved is acceptable? Don't we end up with the rationale to engage in a first strike nuclear attack to destroy an enemy and make their army irrelevant?

Finally, after the Georgia and Virginia campaigns, tens of thousands continued to die. The Confederacy did not immediately implode, the killing went on for months. Rather than the collapse of Confederate food production, I thought it was Grant finally surrounding Lee which was the most proximate cause of surrender. Had Grant been able to achieve this during the Wilderness campaign the year prior, the war would have been over without wholesale attacks on civilian property and infrastructure.

I'm not an expert on the period like some on the forum, is there information on the Union's economic destruction bringing the war to an earliar conclusion?

[Keeler]

I disagree with this logic. Although not directly shooting civilians, condemning them to starve to death either through directly destroying their crops or destroying the economic fabric needed in order to buy food, it amounts to the same thing. Britain used the same excuse for their bombing campaign; we didn't directly bomb civilians, we were bombing their houses and factories. While there are some differences between first and second degree murder, both are murder.

I would agree with you if the Union troops had destroyed the food and infrastructure, and then prevented the civilians from leaving the area by rounding them up in camps or otherwise keeping them tied to a man-made wasteland. As it was, they were free to leave and take their chances elsewhere. In both cases, the majority of homes were not destroyed. Buildings of a military value, or which belonged to individuals who resisted occupation were destroyed. This practice also began to be used by retreating Confederates, for what that is worth. This sort of displacement isn't pleasant, and it certainly led to hardships and likely to some deaths. I am not even going to claim that I believe it was morally justified. What I am saying it is an error to make analogies between actions towards civilians during the Civil War and later wars, and that the Union leadership was motivated by a desire to end the war, not punish the civilian population. For the the record, I haven't seen this last idea floated in this discussion.

Further, if one accepts indirect civilian death as a means to lower casualties on the front line, where is the limit? What ratio of civilians killed to soldiers saved is acceptable? Don't we end up with the rationale to engage in a first strike nuclear attack to destroy an enemy and make their army irrelevant?

While you raise a good point, I think that's a larger discussion which may not be appropriate to have here. I think addressing it in the context of the Civil War is difficult because the direct impact of the war on civilians is nebulous. Without knowing more specifics, it is hard to even start such a discussion. The only estimate I have seen about how many civilians who died because of the war comes from James McPherson, who estimated about 50,000 non-combatants died. I don't know how McPherson reached this conclusion, and if he delved into causes such as starvation, disease, unsanctioned partisan activity, and direct battlefield death (although this number has to be extremely small). What I would say is the field armies bred diseases, produced sick, wounded, and dead soldiers who needed varying degrees of care, and (whether intentionally designed to wreck civilian infrastructure or due to the exigencies of battle) wrecked fences, fields, roads, bridges, and railroads. The war left vast areas of the country without an effective rule of law, allowing horrific partisan activity to occur. All of these ills poured over into the civilian world as long as the war went on. Witnessing such impacts must have played a role in the decision to escalate actions against civilian property. But whether it was justified or not is hard to determine without more solid data.

All
Finally, after the Georgia and Virginia campaigns, tens of thousands continued to die. The Confederacy did not immediately implode, the killing went on for months. Rather than the collapse of Confederate food production, I thought it was Grant finally surrounding Lee which was the most proximate cause of surrender. Had Grant been able to achieve this during the Wilderness campaign the year prior, the war would have been over without wholesale attacks on civilian property and infrastructure.

I'm not an expert on the period like some on the forum, is there information on the Union's economic destruction bringing the war to an earliar conclusion?

But Grant didn't surround Lee in 1864, and what we know now, that the war was in its final months, was less obvious in the fall and early winter of 1864. The armies had been at Petersburg since June; there was little indication that was quickly to change. In the West things looked more promising, but there were still large Confederate armies capable of staying in the field. As I said in my first post, the destruction of the Shenandoah and parts of Georgia and South Carolina not only deprived the armies of food, it forced the civilians to put pressure on soldiers to return home for the spring planting. Thousands of soldiers began to desert, and while this did not change the fate of Lee's army, it weakened the ANVs defenses enough to finally allow a breakthrough at Petersburg, accelerating both the end of the ANV and of the war as a whole. The killing did not immediately end, but it almost certainly would have continued longer without the destruction of these vital areas. For a brief overview of the Shenandoah burning, including its vital importance to Lee's Army, see here.

[Stauffenberg]

I would agree with you if the Union troops had destroyed the food and infrastructure, and then prevented the civilians from leaving the area by rounding them up in camps or otherwise keeping them tied to a man-made wasteland. As it was, they were free to leave and take their chances elsewhere. In both cases, the majority of homes were not destroyed. Buildings of a military value, or which belonged to individuals who resisted occupation were destroyed. This practice also began to be used by retreating Confederates, for what that is worth. This sort of displacement isn't pleasant, and it certainly led to hardships and likely to some deaths.

Ahem. And what do you suppose Grant's direct order to turn the valley into a “barren waste” had on a person like Sheridan who later stated in the midst of his depredations out West after the war with respect to hunters slaughtering the buffalo the First Nation peoples relied on: "Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated." Or perhaps this is more to the point from him: “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead" (later, under pressure, changing this to 9 out of 10).

Your careful parsing of verbal palliatives to downplay the real effect of Sheridan in the Shenandoah doesn't do justice to some heinous actions against civilians on a grand scale, ordered from the top (and of course Lincoln gave Grant the nod, or more likely the direct order as he was getting pretty desperate with the war he unleashed): "they were free to leave and take their chances elsewhere," you state (!), as well as: "This sort of displacement isn't pleasant, and it certainly led to hardships and likely to some deaths." --"isn't pleasant" (!) . Even his soldiers detested what he was doing. I might have done a more diligent research but it is Friday night and late. From militaryhistorynow.com. :


[INDENT]Because residents of the region lived within the borders of a state that had seceded from the Union, Sheridan acted as if they had automatically forfeited their property, if not their very lives. Yet some Union soldiers were aghast at the marching orders. A Pennsylvania cavalryman lamented at the end of the fiery spree: “We burnt some 60 houses and all most of the barns, hay, grain and corn in the shocks for 50 miles [south of] Strasburg… It was a hard-looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year.”

An Ohio major wrote in his diary that the burning “does not seem real soldierly work. We ought to enlist a force of scoundrels for such work.”

A newspaper correspondent embedded with Sheridan’s army reported: “Hundreds of nearly starving people are going North. Not half the inhabitants of the valley can subsist on it in its present condition.”

After one of Sheridan’s favourite aides was shot by Confederate soldiers, the general ordered his troops to burn all houses within a five mile radius. After many outlying dwellings had been torched, the small town at the center – Dayton – was spared only after one Federal officer outright disobeyed Sheridan’s order. The homes and barns of Mennonites – a peaceful sect who opposed slavery and secession – were especially hard hit by that crackdown, according to a 1909 history of Mennonites in America.[/INDENT]

http://militaryhistorynow.com/2015/02/02/sheridans-scorched-earth-campaign-the-union-armys-forgotten-war-crime/

[tripax]

When I wrote my other post, I wanted to look at civilian mortality during the war as well. However, I didn't find anything worth saying. Since Keeler brings it up specifically, I sort of typed up my notes:

...I think addressing it in the context of the Civil War is difficult because the direct impact of the war on civilians is nebulous. Without knowing more specifics, it is hard to even start such a discussion. The only estimate I have seen about how many civilians who died because of the war comes from James McPherson, who estimated about 50,000 non-combatants died. I don't know how McPherson reached this conclusion, and if he delved into causes such as starvation, disease, unsanctioned partisan activity, and direct battlefield death (although this number has to be extremely small). What I would say is the field armies bred diseases, produced sick, wounded, and dead soldiers who needed varying degrees of care, and (whether intentionally designed to wreck civilian infrastructure or due to the exigencies of battle) wrecked fences, fields, roads, bridges, and railroads...

There is a study (Goldin & Lewis 1975) of the direct and indirect economic costs of the civil war, but it focuses on the direct military costs, the economic cost of lost production and consumption of the military dead, and the economic cost of lowered investment when spending went to the war rather than industry. It also looks at the slow recovery of the south. I haven't looked at it closely, but I do not like some of the assumptions it makes. Certainly, everyone agrees that the direct and indirect costs of war are huge, feel free to look at that work for an estimate for the civil war. There are some other studies that look at aspects of the economic costs (and benefits) of the war, but no others I've found are as holistic as Goldin & Lewis.

Hacker (2011) gives a new estimate of deaths of military age males during the civil war (which made quite a stir). In it he also discusses civilian deaths. He mentions favorably McPherson's 50,000 figure, suggesting that a disproportionate number of these were the old, the very young, and especially ex-slaves in what amounted to refugee camps along the border or those following the union army (which would also be very poor conditions). He does not update McPherson's number, and suggests that based on it, the number of southern women between 10 and 44 who died as a result of the war would be about 9,000. McPherson gives a commentary of Hacker's paper but doesn't mention the number. I don't think that figure is discussed in the economics, health, or even history academic literature, I'm sure it is discussed elsewhere on the internet, but a quick search doesn't find any improvements or even criticism of that number.

Hacker's paper is interesting and I recommend it.

While not his focus, Hacker also briefly discusses work by Mark Neely and by Mark Grimsley that deal with the question of total war and the destruction of property (for instance, Neely 2004). I looked at those papers, and they generally support the argument that the Union's actions during the civil war did not target civilians and were in line with the way that the war was fought (they are more critical of the Indian Wars, however, and cite racism as a possible reason). These arguments are not dissimilar to those of Keeler and Grey Fox, but I found Neely's argument more carefully argued and contextually based than either the Civil War Trust article Keeler recommended or the Military History Now article Stauffenberg recommended.

Bibliography:
Goldin, Claudia D., and Frank D. Lewis. "The economic cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and implications." The Journal of Economic History 35.02 (1975): 299-326.
J. David Hacker, "A Census-Based Count of the Civil War Dead", Civil War History, Volume 57, Number 4, December 2011
Mark E. Neely Jr., “Was the Civil War a Total War?” Civil War History 50.4 (2004)

[dinsdale]

I would agree with you if the Union troops had destroyed the food and infrastructure, and then prevented the civilians from leaving the area by rounding them up in camps or otherwise keeping them tied to a man-made wasteland. As it was, they were free to leave and take their chances elsewhere. In both cases, the majority of homes were not destroyed.

I don't think it's a reasonable assumption that people would have survived any better if they had to march away and hope to find food elsewhere. While I agree, this is not the systematic executions practiced in the 20th century, or the ethnic cleansing carried out by the US against the indigenous population, I still believe that Lincoln bears responsibility. I think his character could take criticism without diminishing his positives.

What I am saying it is an error to make analogies between actions towards civilians during the Civil War and later wars, and that the Union leadership was motivated by a desire to end the war, not punish the civilian population. For the the record, I haven't seen this last idea floated in this discussion.

Fair enough, I think we disagree on the severity. However, it does not matter whether Sheridan, Sherman, Grant and Lincoln deliberately wanted to punish civilians, it matters that their actions directly caused the suffering.

Let's imagine the British army burnt Boston, New York and Philadelphia in 1784, to try and deny the Continentals the economic means of waging war, how would history remember them? I'd imagine we'd have a trilogy of Mel Gibson films

But whether it was justified or not is hard to determine without more solid data.

I agree, though I suppose I would take the position that 1 death is too many in this war. It should have been over by 1863 if not for the utter incompetence and short sightedness of the Union.

As I said in my first post, the destruction of the Shenandoah and parts of Georgia and South Carolina not only deprived the armies of food, it forced the civilians to put pressure on soldiers to return home for the spring planting. Thousands of soldiers began to desert, and while this did not change the fate of Lee's army, it weakened the ANVs defenses enough to finally allow a breakthrough at Petersburg,

Thats a good point, though I think we are going to have to disagree that it is justifiable.

I admire Sherman, and wish he'd been with Grant in 1864 instead of on his own, but I can't ignore what he did and how it stains his legacy and the legacy The Union. Sheridan I find to be little more than a psychopath who was lucky to be born in a place and time which contrive to temper and diminish his atrocities.

[Keeler]

Ahem. And what do you suppose Grant's direct order to turn the valley into a “barren waste” had on a person like Sheridan who later stated in the midst of his depredations out West after the war with respect to hunters slaughtering the buffalo the First Nation peoples relied on: "Let them kill, skin and sell until the buffalo is exterminated." Or perhaps this is more to the point from him: “The only good Indians I ever saw were dead" (later, under pressure, changing this to 9 out of 10).

In the interest of historical accuracy, it was Sheridan who pressured a reluctant Grant into issuing the order, which Sheridan had already started to carry out without Grant's approval. This does not absolve Grant of all accountability, but it does undermine what I interpret to be your position, which is that Grant bears responsibility for Sheridan's post-war conduct towards the Great Plains nations because Grant sanctioned Sheridan's burning of the Valley. Instead, it suggests Sheridan was predisposed to acting in such a manner, and that he learned it could be (from his perspective) used successfully. I think any other conversation about the Great Plains would be best served as it's own topic. Personally, I believe Grant's handling of the Great Plains War should be evaluated and criticized when Grant was President, not during the Civil War.

Your careful parsing of verbal palliatives to downplay the real effect of Sheridan in the Shenandoah doesn't do justice to some heinous actions against civilians on a grand scale, ordered from the top (and of course Lincoln gave Grant the nod, or more likely the direct order as he was getting pretty desperate with the war he unleashed): "they were free to leave and take their chances elsewhere," you state (!), as well as: "This sort of displacement isn't pleasant, and it certainly led to hardships and likely to some deaths." --"isn't pleasant" (!) . Even his soldiers detested what he was doing. I might have done a more diligent research but it is Friday night and late. From militaryhistorynow.com. :


Because residents of the region lived within the borders of a state that had seceded from the Union, Sheridan acted as if they had automatically forfeited their property, if not their very lives. Yet some Union soldiers were aghast at the marching orders. A Pennsylvania cavalryman lamented at the end of the fiery spree: “We burnt some 60 houses and all most of the barns, hay, grain and corn in the shocks for 50 miles [south of] Strasburg… It was a hard-looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year.”

An Ohio major wrote in his diary that the burning “does not seem real soldierly work. We ought to enlist a force of scoundrels for such work.”

A newspaper correspondent embedded with Sheridan’s army reported: “Hundreds of nearly starving people are going North. Not half the inhabitants of the valley can subsist on it in its present condition.”

After one of Sheridan’s favourite aides was shot by Confederate soldiers, the general ordered his troops to burn all houses within a five mile radius. After many outlying dwellings had been torched, the small town at the center – Dayton – was spared only after one Federal officer outright disobeyed Sheridan’s order. The homes and barns of Mennonites – a peaceful sect who opposed slavery and secession – were especially hard hit by that crackdown, according to a 1909 history of Mennonites in America.

http://militaryhistorynow.com/2015/0...ten-war-crime/

Again, the orders did not come from the top.

Sheridan argued with his superior that if they did not destroy the Valley’s harvest and everything that supported it, they would have to deal in the future with other Confederate armies using the Valley to threaten the North. For a while Grant held rigid. He wanted Sheridan to follow the original orders, but Sheridan was persistent. Eventually Grant gave in and told his subordinate to perform a retrograde movement back to Strasburg, burning as he went, and then to send some of his troops on rail cars there and at Front Royal to be returned to the Union lines at Petersburg.

Grant did not realize Sheridan had already started his campaign of devastation.

It was Sheridan, not Grant and especially not Lincoln, who conceived of the Burning. And Sheridan began to implement his plan before Grant had agreed to it. If you want to argue Sheridan's actions reflect poorly on Grant and Lincoln, either because they condoned the action or because they did not keep him in control, then there is historical ground to do so. But there is little if any evidence either Grant or Lincoln conceived of or eagerly embraced the destruction.

I have no intention of downplaying anything that happened in the Valley or anywhere else. What I am interested in is encouraging people to consider historical actions in their historical context and not resort to make broad assumptions and statements. There was a systematic destruction of property in the Valley of 1864, but this was not the Eastern Front in 1941. If you read the link above, you will find evidence of Union forces assisting refugee trains and helping civilians move north so that people did not starve to death. I don't find any evidence that Union leadership or the troops were interested in killing or otherwise causing the death of whom they considered civilians.

Real atrocities occurred and both sides were responsible for them. The aide you refer to was Lieutenant John Meigs, who was killed under disputed circumstances on October 7th by Mosby's men. In retaliation Sheridan ordered Custer to burn all buildings within a five mile radius, including homes. I concede that it was brutal and innocent people lost their homes and possessions. However, the incident brings up two points.

First there was murderous guerrilla war occurring between Mosby's rangers and Sheridan's troopers. It began in whenAugust (the following is paraphrased from this article, Mosby's men captured over 200 prisoners, 700 pack animals, 200 cattle, and 100 supply wagons. Even the Union, with its vast resources, could not sustain such losses.

Grant quickly responded to this stinging defeat by ordering Sheridan to send troops ‘through Loudoun County, to destroy and carry off the crops, animals, Negroes, and all men under fifty years of age capable of bearing arms. In this way, you will get many of Mosby’s men.’ He also ordered Sheridan to hunt down the families of Mosby’s men. ‘I think they should be taken and kept at Fort McHenry, or some other secure place, as hostages for the good conduct of Mosby’s men.’ Grant then ominously added ‘When any of Mosby’s men are caught, hang them without trial.’

So here's where Grant can be held accountable. It is not the order to destroy the Valley]Mosby’s increased harrassment of Northern units brought even harsher Union devastation on Shenandoah farms. A vicious cycle was thus formed in the Valley–Sheridan’s men destroyed homes and farms because Mosby’s guerrillas hampered communications and ambushed isolated Northern units, while Mosby’s forces attacked with increasing ferocity because Sheridan’s men devastated the Shenandoah[/Quote]

On September 22nd, a ranger raid on an ambulance train resulted in the disputed murder of Lieutenant Charles McMaster. In retaliation troopers executed another 6 alleged rangers, including a 17 year old who was horrifically dragged by a rope, shot in repeatedly in the face, and then dumped in a wheelbarrow at his mother's front door.

Thus Meigs' death and the retaliatory burning on October 7th was part of a larger pattern of escalating violence which both sides had participated in for months, and which would continue until the end of October. At that point Mosby sent a letter to Sheridan stating that, "any prisoners falling into my hands will be treated with the kindness due to their condition, unless some new act of barbarity shall compel me, reluctantly, to adopt a line of policy repugnant to humanity." Sheridan complied, and the executions stopped.

The second point worth noting is that, with the exception of the burnings on August 18th and October 7th, there was no large-scale destruction of private homes. Harsh as it was, the vast majority of property destruction was directed at objects considered to be of military value (barns, mills, forges, bridges, railroads, etc), some of which belonged to civilians. This created an enormous amount of hardship for civilians, but it was not directed at them because they were civilians. Furthermore, all of the killings I have been able to uncover occurred between combatants. Indeed, as I mentioned there is evidence that Union forces helped evacuate Southern civilians from the devastation. Surely Sheridan must have been at least aware of these efforts, which speaks against the argument made by militaryhistorynow that he believed people "had forfeited their very lives." His goal, and the goal of his superiors, was to rip apart the economy supporting the Southern Armies. We can debate the morality and efficiency of that policy, but in doing so we should be careful to not confuse facts with the perceptions of those who experienced the facts.

I don't think it's a reasonable assumption that people would have survived any better if they had to march away and hope to find food elsewhere. While I agree, this is not the systematic executions practiced in the 20th century, or the ethnic cleansing carried out by the US against the indigenous population, I still believe that Lincoln bears responsibility. I think his character could take criticism without diminishing his positives.

Fair enough, I think we disagree on the severity. However, it does not matter whether Sheridan, Sherman, Grant and Lincoln deliberately wanted to punish civilians, it matters that their actions directly caused the suffering.

Let's imagine the British army burnt Boston, New York and Philadelphia in 1784, to try and deny the Continentals the economic means of waging war, how would history remember them? I'd imagine we'd have a trilogy of Mel Gibson films

I agree, though I suppose I would take the position that 1 death is too many in this war. It should have been over by 1863 if not for the utter incompetence and short sightedness of the Union.

Thats a good point, though I think we are going to have to disagree that it is justifiable.

I admire Sherman, and wish he'd been with Grant in 1864 instead of on his own, but I can't ignore what he did and how it stains his legacy and the legacy The Union. Sheridan I find to be little more than a psychopath who was lucky to be born in a place and time which contrive to temper and diminish his atrocities.

I think I have answered most of this with my post to Stauffenberg (if not, please let me know). One thing I might like to add however is a point about civilian suffering. Yes, those policies caused suffering. But the population was already suffering from the war.

Emotionally they were suffering. Wondering every day and night whether they would return home caused suffering. Rumors of great battles caused suffering. Pouring over the long columns of casualty lists caused suffering. Visiting a husband or brother in a hospital caused suffering. Knowing that a son would forever be lost on faraway fields and in faraway woods in obscure places like Sharpsburg caused suffering.

Economically they were suffering. There were less men to plant and harvest crops, to run farms and plantations and businesses efficiently. Many of those men returned home permanently maimed or suffering from long-term illnesses and had to be supported. On a lesser note, there were less consumer goods available to portions of the country.

There was other types of suffering. There was less political freedom, less personal security, and a decrease in the rule of law- especially in the border states but not there alone. Cities like New York, Richmond, Baltimore, and St Louis experienced deadly riots. In the territories, the abuse, fraud, and violence against the Plains nations reached new levels and ignited a generations-long conflict which generated its own misery. And as abhorrent as slavery was, its disruption and dismantling added new types of suffering among an already-suffering population. There was even suffering in Mexico, as the French took advantage of the war to install Maximilian.

War breeds anarchy, which breeds suffering, and civil war breeds particularly virulent strains of both. And suffering tends to generate hate. I believe Northern leadership desperately wanted to end the war before the anarchy consumed the American people, before the hardness of the war became an insoluble hatred. I believe they reached the same conclusion as the former Confederate soldier who said “What is the worst in war, to burn a barn or kill a fellow man?”. For the sake of this discussion, we could changed the wording slightly to "What is worst in war, to burn a family's barn or to kill a family's father, brothers, or sons?" Perhaps that answer doesn't justify burning the Valley, but it does get us to think about the controversy in a different light.

[Stauffenberg]

I'd advise the moderator to remove that as it's spam for porn sites in Russian.

[Keeler]

I'd advise the moderator to remove that as it's spam for porn sites in Russian.

Should I take offense to that, or has something been deleted

[Stauffenberg]

Should I take offense to that, or has something been deleted

The spam was deleted and my regrets for not responding to your detailed response , which surely deserves the same. A RL move has seen me buried alive in boxes that needed sorting, deleting, given away etc.

Will respond soon, although I have to also admit that their Davai! RUS game has grabbed me by the ears too.

Cheers

[Keeler]

The spam was deleted and my regrets for not responding to your detailed response , which surely deserves the same. A RL move has seen me buried alive in boxes that needed sorting, deleting, given away etc.

Will respond soon, although I have to also admit that their Davai! RUS game has grabbed me by the ears too.

Cheers

No worries. It's always good to add some levity when possible.

[Straight Arrow]

Interesting piece gentlemen; it expanded my mind.

[BattleVonWar]

Extremely informative. Agreed.. Something different from the dogmatic point of view of some the history books and textbooks I've had over the years. That or TV series... I feel genuinely enlightened in some respects!

Interesting piece gentlemen; it expanded my mind.