The Civil War: A Narrative (Volume II)

The second volume in Shelby Foote’s epic continues where the first leaves off. It is stylistically the same and just as enjoyable of a read. In fact, I enjoyed it more because the Union Army finally starts to win major battles. At first though, the Union army picks up where it left off at Antietam: fumbling, still searching for its leaders, and losing the war. Fredericksburg gets Ambrose Burnside relieved. Chancellorsville spells the end for “Fighting Joe” Hooker. Lee goes on the attack only to be somewhat miraculously repulsed at Gettysburg by General Meade (the third commander of the Army of the Potomac in as many months). We see Grant rising as a star: he has shaken off the mistakes of Shiloh and launches a brilliant, indefatigable campaign to seize Vicksburg and later free the besieged Union army at Chattanooga. Foote ends this installment in July of 1863. The Union army has bifurcated the south along the Mississippi. The Confederate Army has lost Tennessee and cannot defend the heartland against the overwhelming Union troops. Any hope of foreign intervention is lost. The end seems to be near for the Confederacy.

I shared most of my thoughts in the last post and the themes persist in this volume. The rest of this post comments on two themes. First, the rising tensions among generals on the same side and Union civil unrest. Second, the many similarities between soldiers of the modern U.S. Army and those who fought in the Civil War.

Trouble on the Front (and Homefront)

After a few years of war, it seems everyone is testy. The Armies have both gained competence and lost patience. On the Union side, we see this through General Grant, who expertly wields the “I never got your message” alibi to subvert the incompetent General McClernand. Grant begins moving his army towards Vicksburg prematurely before receiving reinforcements. His justification? “I feared that delay might bring McClernand.” (612) It is both funny and upsetting to remember that personal grievances have such a large role when many lives are at stake.

People eventually grow tired of working with each other under normal circumstances, and the exhausting campaigns of the Civil War were no different. The Confederate leadership stages a mutiny against General Bragg. All his subordinate commanders essentially write the President that he is not fit for duty following the Battle of Chickamauga. Bragg stays in command longer than you would think but is ultimately replaced. Generals Lucius Walker and John Marmaduke have beef because Walker didn’t support him in an earlier battle. After a rout, Marmaduke accuses Walker of cowardice. Walker responds by demanding satisfaction via duel. They have their duel, Walker is mortally wounded, and the Confederates lose another general.¹

The civilian population grows unruly as well. The Copperhead factions are critical of the war. Initially, Clement Vallindigham, an agitator and former representative from Ohio, is expelled to the Confederacy. But they don’t want him because he doesn’t accept the Confederate government. So he makes his way to Canada by way of the West Indies. He is nominated by the Democratic party for governor of Ohio and gives a campaign speech from the Canada side of Niagara Falls, where he won’t be arrested. He even returns to the United States wearing a false mustache and, no kidding, a pillow stuffed underneath his shirt. (634) Strange times indeed.

Union citizens don’t like the draft. I haven’t yet reached the part about the New York City draft riots but anti-draft sentiment is alive in the entire Union. The draft statistics are interesting. 87,000 escaped the draft by paying a $300 fee ($7,500 in 2024 dollars). 118,000 were substitutes hired by a drafted individual (presumably a cheaper alternative to paying the fee). In total, only 50,000 men were conscripted in the Union, and many of them ended up deserting. That’s a lot of people, but less than 10\% of the Union Army over the course of the war. Still, it’s the principle that riled the people up. And they responded:

In retaliation, conscription officials were roughed up on occasion, a few being shot from ambush as they went about their duties, and others had their property destroyed by angry mobs, all in the good old American way dating back to the revolution. 635

The response to this brewing unrest was authoritarian. The suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was a big deal. Foote makes no commentary on the justification of the suppression of public dissent and merely states it as it is. Though I knew this happened, I didn’t realize the scale of imprisonment. Edwin Stanton, secretary of war, was somewhat Stalinesque with the detainments:

“If I tap that little bell,” he told a visitor, obviously relishing the notion, “I can send you to a place where you will never hear the dogs bark.” Apparently the little bell rang often; a postwar search of the records disclosed the names of 13,535 citizens arrested and confined in various military prisons during Stanton’s tenure of office under Lincoln, while another survey (not concerned with names, and therefore much less valid) put the total at 38,000 for the whole period of the war. 631

This number of detained citizens is proportional to the number of Japanese-Americans placed in internment camps during WWII when adjusting for population size.

Soldiers are Soldiers

I often find myself wondering what it was like to be a soldier in an earlier era. Many of the daily activities seem similar: wandering through the woods, staring perplexedly at a map, lying down doing absolutely nothing. Foote’s work, which is full of details about the lives of individual soldiers, supports the idea that things haven’t changed so much for the lowly private. Here’s a fun list of some similarities:

• Soldiers complain a lot. After numerous deadly defeats that serve only to prove the “ineptness of their leaders,” morale is low. Foote puts a positive spin on this, writing that

griping was not only the time-honored prerogative of the American soldier, from Valley Forge on down, but was also, in its way, a proof of his basic toughness and resilience. 118

Nearly every soldier I’ve met has internalized the idea that “griping” is a “time-honored prerogative” to some extent.

• Those on the front lines enviously disparage the support soldiers. In today’s army, infantrymen have a derogatory term for non-infantrymen: POGs (people other than grunts). Naturally, they have some resentment that their role is so much more physically grueling than that of others. At Gettysburg, a mis-calibrated artillery battery fires over its target (grunts) and hits the rear element (POGs). The grunts are amused!

“Quartermaster hunters,” the crouching front-line soldiers called these last, deriving much satisfaction from the thought that what was meant for them was making havoc among the normally easy-living men of the rear echelon. 542

• “Volunteers” rarely volunteer. There’s a concept in the modern army of being “voluntold” to do something. Sure, asking for volunteers is a fair approach, but what about when no one wants to do it? This quote speaks for itself:

All this time the Confederates kept firing, exploding caissons, dismounting guns, and maiming so many cannoneers — particularly in those batteries adjacent to the little clump of trees — that replacements had to be furnished from nearby infantry outfits, supposedly on a volunteer basis, but actually by a hard-handed form of conscription. “Volunteers are wanted to man the battery,” a Massachusetts captain told his company. “Every man is to go of his own free will and accord. Come out here, John Dougherty, McGivern, and you Corrigan, and work those guns.” 546

• Soldiers are sleepy. Stonewall Jackson’s love of sleep was thoroughly documented in volume 1, but here we see General Thomas is also a sleepy guy, electing to sleep through a planning meeting for the Battle of Chickamauga:

Though he slept through much of the conference — not only because it was his custom (he had done the same at Stones River) but also because he had spent the last two nights on the march and most of today under heavy attack — he repeated the same words whenever he was called on for a tactical opinion: “I would strengthen the left.” But when Rosecrans replied, as he did each time, “Where are we going to take it from?” there was no answer; Thomas would be back asleep by then, propped upright in his chair. 726

But Thomas made good use of this shuteye and ends up valiantly saving the day and earning the nickname the “Rock of Chickamauga.”

• Everyone thinks the higher ups have it easy. As a subordinate, the work superiors do is often opaque, and you mistakenly think they have it easier than you. In reality, they usually have bigger problems. In this example, a private approaches his commanding general to ask for a furlough to see his wife.

“I aint seen my old woman, General, for four months,” the man explained. If he thought this could not fail in its persuasiveness he was wrong. “And I have not seen mine for two years,” Thomas replied. “If a general can submit to such privation, surely a private can.” Evidently the soldier had not previously considered this connection between privates and privation. 867

• (Some) leaders are quick to take credit and quicker to dole out blame. Denial is an instinctive response to failure. In the case of a lost battle, admitting failure suggests your incompetence resulted in unnecessary bloodshed. That is an understandably tough pill to swallow.

Hooker was quick to place the blame for his defeat on Stoneman, Averell, Howard, and Sedgwick, sometimes singly and at other times collectively. It was only in private, and some weeks later, that he was able to see, or at any rate confess, where the real trouble had lain. “I was not hurt by a shell, and I was not drunk,” he told a fellow officer. “For once I lost confidence in Joe Hooker, and that is all there is to it.” 315

• A visit from the boss always makes you think you’re in trouble. When General Meade is given command of the Army of the Potomac right before Gettysburg, he is certain he is about to be arrested.

No one was more surprised than Meade himself. His immediate reaction, on walking out of a sound sleep at 3 o’clock in the morning to find the staff officer standing beside his cot, was alarm. He thought he was going to be arrested. Sure enough, after a brief exchange of greetings, during which Meade wondered just what military sin he had committed, Hardie’s first words were: “General, I’m afraid I’ve come to make trouble for you.” And with that, changing the nature if not the force of the shock, he handed him Halleck’s letter of instructions, which began: “You will receive with this the order of the President placing you in command of the Army of the Potomac.” 451

• Soldiers take drastic measures to stay warm. Operating in the cold is difficult for many reasons, but perhaps the greatest reason is the individual becomes obsessed with being warm. They’ll hide in vehicles, refuse to get out of their sleeping bag, and do other… gross… things. It was no different in the Civil War.

The ground in front of the sunken road, formerly carpeted solid blue, had taken on a mottle hue, with patches of startling white. Binoculars disclosed the cause. Many of the Federal dead had been stripped stark naked by shivering Confederates, who had crept out in the darkness to scavenge the warm clothes from the bodies of men who needed them no longer. 43

Other Quotes

Foote shows his beautiful writing on every page but this is a particularly good example of his designs on a Proustian legacy:

A mysterious refulgence, shot with fanwise shafts of varicolored light, predominantly reds and blues — first a glimmer, then a spreading glow, as if all the countryside between Fredericksburg and Washington were afire — filled a wide arc of the horizon beyond the Federal right. It was the aurora borealis, seldom visible this far south and never before seen by most of the Confederates, who watched it with amazement. The Northerners might make of it what they chose by way of a portent (after all, these were the Northern Lights) but to one Southerner it seemed “that the heavens were hanging out banners and streamers and setting off fireworks in honor of our great victory.”

As if to rival this gaudy nighttime aerial display, morning brought a terrestrial phenomenon, equally amazing in its way. The ground in front of the sunken road, formerly carpeted solid blue, had taken on a mottle hue, with patches of startling white. Binoculars disclosed the cause. Many of the Federal dead had been stripped stark naked by shivering Confederates, who had crept out in the darkness to scavenge the warm clothes from the bodies of men who needed them no longer. 43

Van Dorn’s adultery catches up with him:

On through April he labored, and into May, though apparently not so exclusively as to require him to abandon other pursuits; for at 10 o’clock on the morning of May 7, Dr George B. Peters, a local citizen, walked into headquarters, where Van Dorn was hard at work at his desk, and shot him in the back of the head with a pistol. He died about 2 o’clock that afternoon, by which time the assassin was safe within the Union lines, having ridden off in the buggy he had left parked outside while he stepped indoors to carry out his project. The accepted explanation was that the doctor had chosen this emphatic means to protest the general’s attention to his young wife, though there were some who claimed that he had done the shooting for political reasons. 178

A soldier comparing the businesslike Grant to the theatrical McClellan:

All things were said of [Grant], and this: “Here was no McClellan, begging the boys to allow him to light his cigar on theirs, or inquiring to what regiment that exceedingly fine-marching company belonged… There was no nonsense, no sentiment; only a plain business man of the republic, there for the one single purpose of getting that command over the river in the shortest time possible.” 219

I was amused by Sherman’s bloodthirst for journalists. He really hates them:

“The men have sense, and will trust us. As to the reports in newspapers, we must scorn them, else they will ruin us and our country. They are as much enemies to good government as the secesh, and between the two I like the secesh best, because they are a brave, open enemy and not a set of sneaking, croaking scoundrels.” 332

He even celebrates their death:

The red-haired general was in excellent spirits, having learned that four newspaper reporters had been aboard the towboat that was lost. “They were so deeply laden with weighty matter that they must have sunk,” he remarked happily, and added: “In our affliction we can console ourselves with the pious reflection that there are plenty more of the same sort.” 353

A final push to attack Vicksburg was the first time a battle was launched according to synchronized watches. Seems like they could’ve thought of this earlier, but upon further research, reasonably accurate watches (loss of 30 seconds over a week) only came about in the late 19th century for railroad purposes.

For the first time in history, a major assault was launched by commanders whose eyes were fixed on the hands of watches synchronized the night before. 384

The Vicksburg siege was so long the opposite sides became friends. It’s reminiscent of suspending fighting for Christmas on the Western front during WWI.

There was much fraternization between pickets, who arranged informal truces for the exchange of coffee and tobacco, and the same Federal engineer reported that the enemy’s “indifference to our approach became at some points almost ludicrous.” Once, for example, when the blue sappers found that as a result of miscalculation a pair of approach trenches would converge just inside the rebel picket line, the two sides called a cease-fire and held a consultation at which it was decided that the Confederates would pull back a short distance in order to avoid an unnecessary fire fight. At one stage of the discussion a Federal suggested that the approaches could be redesigned to keep from disturbing the butternut sentries, but the latter seemed to think that it would be a shame if all that digging went to waste. Besides, one said, “it don’t make any difference. You yanks will soon have the place anyhow.” 424

Gettysburg started early. Lee wanted to wait until he had moved his entire Army, but General Heth heard there were shoes and a light Union force defending them, so he took some undisciplined initiative. He was then spared death in an unbelievably ridiculous way:

Heth himself did not make it all the way, having been unhorsed by a fragment of shell which struck him on the side of the head, knocked him unconscious, and probably would have killed him, too, except that the force of the blow was absorbed in part by a folded newspaper tucked under the sweatband of a too-large hat acquired the day before in Cashtown. 475

You might think careerism takes a backseat in times of war, but you would be wrong. General Slocum thinks Gettysburg will be a rout so he does not fully commit his forces to preserve his career:

And having noted this, he acted in accordance with his insight. Slocum’s second division (but still not Slocum himself; he refused to come forward in person and take command by virtue of his rank, judging that Meade’s plans for the occupation of the Pipe Creek line were being perverted by this affair near Gettysburg, which seemed to be going very badly. He would risk his men, but not his career; heads were likely to roll, and he was taking care that his would not be among them).

Meade was a prickly guy and is strangely upset about people lionizing him after Gettysburg:

Meade had already disclaimed such praise from other sources. “The papers are making a great deal too much fuss about me,” he wrote home. “I claim no extraordinary merit for this last battle, and would prefer waiting a little while to see what my career is to be before making any pretensions… I never claimed a victory,” he explained, “though I stated that Lee was defeated in his efforts to destroy my army.”

Politics are everything. Lincoln is pissed Meade doesn’t pursue the Army of Northern Virginia after Gettysburg, which he thinks would have ended the war there. But his hands are tied because of optics and the need for public support.

The Administration simply could not afford to be placed in the position of having forced the resignation of the man who, in three hard days of fighting, had just turned back the supreme Confederate effort to conquer a peace: an effort, moreover, launched hard on the heels of Union defeats at Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, which had been fought under leaders no recognized as hand-picked infcompetents, both of whom had been kept in command for more than a month after their fiascos. No matter what opinion the citizenry might have as to whether or not the rebels had been “invaders,” politically it would not do to make a martyr of the hero who had driven them from what he called “our soil.” 617

General Pemberton, who commanded Vicksburg during the siege, seemed like a good soldier. He accepts a lesser rank to continue serving the (wrong) cause (unlike the many prima donnas on both sides who would never dream of giving up their stars):

Had you succeeded none would have blamed; had you not made the attempt, few if any would have defended your course” — but ended, two months later, by accepting the Pennsylvanian’s resignation as a lieutenant general, at which rank he was unemployable, and by presenting him with a commission as a lieutenant colonel of artillery, the rank he had held in that same branch when he first crossed over and threw in with the South. In this capacity Pemberton served out the war, often in the thick of battle, thereby demonstrating a greater devotion to the cause he had adopted than did many who had inherited it as a birthright. 645-646

Sleepy General Thomas was a badass. “We will hold the town till we starve” gives me goosebumps:

Grant agreed, and at once sent two dispatches of his own: one informing Rosecrans that he was relieved of command, the other instructing Thomas to hold onto Chattanooga “at all hazards.” Thomas replied promptly with a message that indicated how aptly he had been characterized as the Rock of Chickamauga. “We will hold the town till we starve,” he told Grant. 785

In case you were wondering how much it paid to clean up a battlefield and bury the dead. At Gettysburg, they earned $1.59 per body ($50 in 2024 dollars). With 7,000 dead, an ambitious grave digger could earn $350,000 for taking care of the entire battlefield! 830

It was interesting reading about the poor public reaction to the Gettysburg Address. Lincoln followed a guy who spoke for two hours, and proceeded to speak for two minutes. The Chicago Times wrote the following about what is perhaps the best-known speech in American history:

“The cheek of every American must tingle with shame as he reads the silly, flat and dishwatery utterances of the man who has to be pointed out to intelligent foreigners as the President of the United States.” 832

General Cleburne, “considered by many to be the best division commander in either army, South or North,” was brainstorming ideas to turn the tide for the Confederacy and proposed freeing the slaves. Big mistake.

We can change the race from a dreaded weakness to a [source] of strength… we can do this more effectually than the North can now do, for we can give the Negro not only his own freedom, but that of his wife and child, and can secure it to him in his old home… Such an action would remove forever all selfish taint from our cause and place independence above every question of property. The very magnitude of the sacrifice itself, such as no nation has ever voluntarily made before, would appall our enemies… and fill our hearts with a pride and singleness of purpose which would clothe us with new strength in battle. 954

He was silenced and blacklisted, never having a serious command again. The reaction from his peers was as if he had proposed sending their mothers and sisters to the front lines! In conclusion, the Civil War was most certainly about slavery.