Civil War 150th

[milkweg]

I will watch my DVD of The Outlaw Josey Wales in honor of the fallen.

[ezzler]

Nice typo in The First Post today.

"what ifs" hang over the Civil War. Winston Churchill once wrote an amusing essay, If Lee Had Not Won the Battle of Gettysburg.

Churchill's essay is not very good though. Stretching 'what ifs' past any point of credulity.

Can read it here
http://www.sovereignty.org.uk/siteinfo/ ... iflee.html

[Capt. Harlock]

No offense meant at all here, but that last bit seems a little hard to believe. I know Butler was one of the South's least-favorite people (especially in Louisiana), but was he really hated more than Sherman?

It does seem surprising, but from the histories I've read, yes, "Beast" Butler was even more hated than Sherman. He did two unpardonable things in Southern eyes: first, he was the commander at Fort Monroe (note hint in my April 19 post) who started the policy of refusing to return runaway slaves. (He called them "contraband of war", and from then on, they were called "contrabands".) Second, as you're probably aware, he was the military governor of New Orleans after its capture. He dealt somewhat harshly with certain acts of defiance on the part of the civilians there. Above all, he directed that New Orleans women showing disrespect to Union soldiers would be treated as "ladies of the town" (prostitutes). The chivalrous South went ballistic.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

Virginia was going to the Confederacy, but Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Maryland hung in the balance. The pro-Secession side in Tennessee received a mighty boost from John Bell, possibly the most distinguished politician in the state. He had been a compromise candidate for the Presidency in 1860 with the Constitutional Union Party. But now he announced his support for a "united South", citing the "unnecessary, aggressive, cruel, unjust wanton war which is being forced upon us".

In Missouri, the pro-Unionists were aware of Governor Jackson's intent to seize the St. Louis arsenal. (Pro-Southerners had already seized the state's other arsenal at Liberty, but it had held only about a thousand muskets.) The arsenal was commanded by Captain Nathaniel Lyon, as fierce an abolitionist as Jackson was pro-slavery. Lyon knew the most important contents of the arsenal were 21,000 modern muskets, and with the quiet support of Congressman Francis P. Blair (brother to Cabinet member Montgomery Blair), he began putting together a plan to transfer the muskets to Illinois and safety.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

Pro-Secession feelings in Tennessee continued to rise. The Nashville Patriot editorialized:

[font="Times New Roman"]The well authenticated events of the past ten days are sufficient, we imagine, to convince every reasonable mind of the utter hopelessness of a peaceful solution of the intersectional troubles ... the identity of object and the community of interest existing in all the slaveholding States must and will unite them.[/font]

In Maryland, pro-Southerners had wrecked several railroad bridges, and even more, had torn down the telegraph lines leading to Washington. The apparently isolated city went into a state of near panic, with volunteer companies sandbagging public buildings, especially the Treasury. Lincoln visited the officers and men of the 6th Massachusetts wounded in the April 19th riot, and apparently gave way to depression. "I don't believe there is any North," he said. "The [New York] 7th regiment is a myth. Rhode Island is not known on our geography any longer. You are the only Northern realities."

[Capt. Harlock]

April 25, 1861:

Abraham Lincoln was proved wrong about the 7th New York regiment. It arrived in Washington, having used Benjamin Butler's route and sailed around Baltimore. Lincoln could now relax, if only a little, about the situation in Maryland:

[font="Times New Roman"]ORDER TO GENERAL SCOTT.
[right]Washington, April 25, 1861.[/right]
Lieutenant-general Scott.

My Dear Sir:—The Maryland Legislature assembles to-morrow at Annapolis, and not improbably will take action to arm the people of that State against the United States. The question has been submitted to and considered by me whether it would not be justifiable, upon the ground of necessary defense, for you, as General in Chief of the United States Army, to arrest or disperse the members of that body. I think it would not be justifiable nor efficient for the desired object.

First. They have a clearly legal right to assemble, and we cannot know in advance that their action will not be lawful and peaceful, and if we wait until they shall have acted their arrest or dispersion will not lessen the effect of their action.

Secondly. We cannot permanently prevent their action. If we arrest them, we cannot long hold them as prisoners, and when liberated they will immediately reassemble and take their action; and precisely the same if we simply disperse them—they will immediately reassemble in some other place.

I therefore conclude that it is only left to the Commanding General to watch and await their action, which, if it shall be to arm their people against the United States, he is to adopt the most prompt and efficient means to counteract, even, if necessary, to the bombardment of their cities and, in the extremest necessity, the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus.

[center]Your obedient servant,[/center]
Abraham Lincoln.[/font]


In Missouri, Nathaniel Lyon (now a brigadier general of volunteers thanks to Congressman Blair) put his plan in motion to sneak away the modern muskets from the St. Louis arsenal. But secrets were very hard to keep in the Civil War, especially in the border states where there were sympathizers for both sides. An angry mob showed up at the wharf. Lyon was up to the challenge, however. He sent a few boxes of older flintlock muskets to a docked steamboat, where the mob intercepted them and carried them away in triumph. Towards midnight the 21,000 modern muskets were carried across the Mississippi and out of the state on another steamboat.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

Both sides may have been a little premature. Virginia offered the city of Richmond to be the new capital of the Confederacy. The referendum which would make Virginia's secession formal was still nearly a month away, but everyone seems to have regarded it as a certainty. (In spite of local but strong opposition in the northwestern area of the state.)

Lincoln also viewed it as a fait accompli. He had already declared a blockade of the ports of the seven original Confederate states. Now he extended it to the ports of Virginia and North Carolina as well. (Although, by some measures, North Carolina would be the last state to leave the Union.) Many historians consider the two declarations to have been a legal mistake, for blockades are imposed against nations at war. Lincoln had inadvertently opened the door to recognition of the Confederacy as a sovereign nation, rather than a rebellious section of his own country. Pro-Southern sympathizers in Britain and elsewhere began to push for formal recognition.

[ilovestrategy]

This is better than  any fiction. 

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

Maryland Governor Thomas Hicks had called the state legislature into session to consider the question of leaving the Union. Since the capital, Annapolis, was essentially occupied by Union troops, the legislature met at the city of Frederick. (Which incidentally lies about 35 miles from the battlefields of Antietam and Gettysburg.) However, the city was, unlike Baltimore, in a pro-Union area of the state, and the legislature voted 53 to 13 against secession -- for the time being. But they also passed a resolution against allowing Union troops to cross the state. (Which Lincoln ignored.) They agreed to re-convene on September 17 in order to reevaluate the situation.

[parusski]

Just letting you know I am still following. The next four years should be interesting, if you keep it up.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

North Carolina Governor John Willis Ellis had left little doubt about which side he was on when he had answered Lincoln's call for troops by saying, “I can be no party to this wicked violation of the laws of the country and to this war upon the liberties of a free people. You can get no troops from North Carolina.” But he had not had much regard for the laws of the United States himself when he ordered the state militia to seize three federal forts and the Fayetteville arsenal. Now he called the legislature into session to deal with the question of leaving the Union.

The legislature authorized an election on May 13 for a convention on secession to meet on May 20. It was not much time, but there could no longer be serious doubt as to which way the state would go. One North Carolinian would later write: "This furor, this moral epidemic, swept over the country like a tempest, before which the entire population seemed to succumb."

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

General Winfield Scott ordered Union troops to seize Arlington Heights, Virginia, which is just across the Potomac river from Washington, D.C. It was the first invasion of Confederate territory. And it also just happened to include the Custis-Lee estate, home of Robert E.Lee, and future site of Arlington cemetery.

[ilovestrategy]

It always amazed me that Scott was still around. His time in service had to have been at least 50 years.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

The Confederacy gained one state, and made a long stride towards another. By a resounding vote of 69-1, the Arkansas convention adopted its ordinance of secession:

[font="Times New Roman"]AN ORDINANCE to dissolve the union now existing between the State of Arkansas and the other States united with her under the compact entitled "The Constitution of the United States of America."

Whereas, in addition to the well-founded causes of complaint set forth by this convention, in resolutions adopted on the 11th of March, A.D. 1861, against the sectional party now in power in Washington City, headed by Abraham Lincoln, he has, in the face of resolutions passed by this convention pledging the State of Arkansas to resist to the last extremity any attempt on the part of such power to coerce any State that had seceded from the old Union, proclaimed to the world that war should be waged against such States until they should be compelled to submit to their rule, and large forces to accomplish this have by this same power been called out, and are now being marshaled to carry out this inhuman design; and to longer submit to such rule, or remain in the old Union of the United States, would be disgraceful and ruinous to the State of Arkansas:

Therefore we, the people of the State of Arkansas, in convention assembled, do hereby declare and ordain, and it is hereby declared and ordained, That the "ordinance and acceptance of compact" passed and approved by the General Assembly of the State of Arkansas on the 18th day of October, A.D. 1836, whereby it was by said General Assembly ordained that by virtue of the authority vested in said General Assembly by the provisions of the ordinance adopted by the convention of delegates assembled at Little Rock for the purpose of forming a constitution and system of government for said State, the propositions set forth in "An act supplementary to an act entitled `An act for the admission of the State of Arkansas into the Union, and to provide for the due execution of the laws of the United States within the same, and for other purposes,'" were freely accepted, ratified, and irrevocably confirmed, articles of compact and union between the State of Arkansas and the United States, and all other laws and every other law and ordinance, whereby the State of Arkansas became a member of the Federal Union, be, and the same are hereby, in all respects and for every purpose herewith consistent, repealed, abrogated, and fully set aside; and the union now subsisting between the State of Arkansas and the other States, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby forever dissolved.

And we do further hereby declare and ordain, That the State of Arkansas hereby resumes to herself all rights and powers heretofore delegated to the Government of the United States of America; that her citizens are absolved from all allegiance to said Government of the United States, and that she is in full possession and exercise of all the rights and sovereignty which appertain to a free and independent State.

We do further ordain and declare, That all rights acquired and vested under the Constitution of the United States of America, or of any act or acts of Congress, or treaty, or under any law of this State, and not incompatible with this ordinance, shall remain in full force and effect, in nowise altered or impaired, and have the same effect as if this ordinance had not been passed.

Adopted and passed in open convention on the 6th day of May, A.D. 1861.[/font]


Meanwhile, the Tennessee General Assembly authorized a popular vote on secession. There had been a referendum in February about whether or not to call a secession convention, but it had been handily defeated. After Fort Sumter, however, things looked different. East Tennessee, where there were few slave-owners, was still in favor of Union. West Tennessee was strong for the Confederacy. Middle Tennessee was shifting.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

Several large crates labeled "marble" but actually holding four cannons plus ammunition arrived in St. Louis, Missouri, in response to Governor Jackson's secret request. Although the best of the muskets had been spirited out of the St. Louis federal arsenal, nearly 40,000 guns remained. Jackson meant to have them, and the cannons went to "Camp Jackson", were a number of pro-Southern irregulars were training. As secret as the operation had been, word that something was up leaked to the pro-Northern side.

A note: there were actually plenty of guns in the Southern states, since hunting was even more popular then than it is now. However, providing the many varieties of weapons, some of them made by local gunsmiths, with a continual supply of ammunition was a problem beyond the ability of Southern transport. They badly needed reasonably standardized weapons and bullets. The rifle-making equipment rescued from Harper's Ferry would help greatly, especially since Jefferson Davis knew something about it. (By an irony of history, he had approved the .58 caliber rifled musket when he was Secretary of War.) But it would take time to set the equipment working, and deliver the muskets from Virginia across the Confederacy. More time than the situation in Missouri would allow.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

Nathaniel Lyon determined to neutralize the threat from the men at "Camp Jackson". (It is rumored that he had gone inside the camp disguised as a woman.) He put together a force of volunteers and all the U.S. Army regulars he could assemble, greatly outnumbering the men in Camp Jackson, surrounded the camp, and placed everyone inside under arrest. The Camp Jacksonians gave in.

But now Lyon made a critical mistake. He marched his prisoners through downtown St. Louis towards the arsenal. A shouting crowd objected to the humiliation of the men, and someone fired a shot. Soon Lyon's troops were firing on the civilians, and receiving fire in return. By the time it was over, 28 civilians and 5 troopers were dead, with many more on both sides wounded.

If neutrality had ever been possible in Missouri, that chance was gone. Governor Jackson re-submitted his "Military Bill" to the state General Assembly, which would create a new state military force, and incidentally grant Jackson wide executive powers.

[ilovestrategy]

That was a pretty serious mistake on Lyon's part.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

The Missouri state legislature passed Governor Jackson's "Military Bill". This measure disbanded the Missouri volunteer militia and reformed it as the Missouri State Guard to resist "invasion" and "rebellion" (which meant pro-Union activities). It also outlawed or prohibited other militia organizations. Interestingly, it also required that all commands in in the State Guard be given in English, which was meant to prevent Missourians of German ancestry (who tended to favor the North) from becoming officers.

Jackson appointed Sterling Price, a former Governor and a hero of the Mexican-American War, to be the commander of the State Guard. Price had also presided over the Missouri secession convention, where he had voted in favor of Union. But the Camp Jackson affair had turned him to the secessionist side -- so much so that he would eventually lead his remaining troops into Mexico rather than surrender at the end of the Civil War.

[ilovestrategy]

One thing about the Civil War that always amazed me was the number of Mexican War vets that became generals and knew each other.

[Capt. Harlock]

150 Years Ago Today:

George B. McClellan was appointed to command the Department of Ohio, taking charge of all Union forces in that region. McClellan was the most promising officer in the U.S. Army after the departure of Robert E. Lee, having graduated second in his class at West Point. (In this amateur historian's opinion, he would have made a great Southern general, since he performed fairly well on the defensive. But he did not have the aggressive spirit that the North needed.)

Another less than brilliant Union general also made a move. Benjamin Butler decided to occupy Baltimore as well as Annapolis. There was no resistance to his forces on the streets of Baltimore, but in Washington, Winfield Scott was outraged.