The Maximum Leader, my go-to source for blogging inspiration these days, has written a longish bit on why he thinks the Civil War is bollox. ML claims that the Civil War is interesting, at best, in a purely tactical sense, or perhaps as a parade of amusing incompetence on the part of the Union generals. Now, I for one am not going to say that hundreds of thousands of Civil War round table participants, re-enactors, historians and others have wasted their lives in such a tragic manner.
In fact, I find the Civil War fascinating in large part exactly because of many of the things the Maximum Leader finds icky and bad-smelling.
The wars’ end was a foregone conclusion. Well, let’s let the odds makers decide and not run the race, what? The Greeks, faced with the unprecedented size and strength of the Persian army, should have just rolled over. But Marathon, Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea proved that the side facing the short end of the materials and logistics stick is not normally foredoomed to failure. Granted, the safe bet is, as Napoleon remarked, on the side of the biggest battalions. But the safe bet is not always the winning bet.
Many of the Confederate leaders were well aware of Greek history, and in fact made conscious analogy between their cause and Sparta. This, considering the lot of the Messenian Helots, and the eventual fate of Sparta once the Thebans got sufficiently pissed off at them, was an ironic choice of historical model. Lee was certainly aware of the material advantages of the North, yet he and his army fought anyway. That is historical drama of the best sort.
What-if’s. The Civil War has, more than any other war, been the fount of what-if scenarios. (Read any good alternate WWI stories lately?) The underdog south came close – if not to winning outright – to putting a serious spoke in the Union’s wheel on several occasions. And the margins that saw them fall short were often short indeed. The south got the cream of the US military leadership, and they eked out every last bit of potential from the Rebel armies. Few could argue that the south missed its chance for lack of trying.
It was not until late in the war that the North even had commanding generals worthy of the name – Sherman, the only real strategic genius in the war, and Grant, who was dogged, determined and tactically skilled enough to actually put the Union armies’ advantages into battle, no matter what the cost. The most fertile ground for speculation, therefore, is in the earlier stages of the war, when southern advantages in leadership and elan gave some chance of overthrowing northern advantages of numbers and supply.
Most of these what-ifs focus, typically, on Antietam and Gettysburg. If the orders hadn’t been lost before Antietam, surely Lee and Jackson could have run wild through the north. Or Gettysburg, which is often called the high water mark of the Confederacy. Those are wrong, however. I think the most interesting turning point is Jackson’s depression in the seven days.
The thing is, the south was looking for its Thermopylae, and got it in hundreds of battles, small and large, where they slowed or even stopped but could not destroy the union army. And always at heavy cost of irreplaceable Confederate soldiers. What they needed was a Salamis, the titanic gamble that paid off in the annihilation of the Persian Army. Which is what Lee almost had in the Seven Day’s. McClellan had fallen back from Richmond; and Lee, finally in command, was pushing the Union troops down the Peninsula. He was aiming at a colossal envelopment, and he needed Jackson to bring the other arm home. If Jackson had done so, the entire Army of the Potomac might have been destroyed or captured. But Jackson, uncharacteristically, was not as aggressive as he was in the Shenandoah, or at Chancellorsville. The pincer didn’t close, and the Union Army was able to escape.
All of these what-ifs are endlessly fascinating mostly because the war should have lasted about three months and ending in total Union victory. The very fact that the able Confederate military leaders were able to prolong the war so long in the face of numerous Union advantages is remarkable – the achievement of the impossible. It is almost irresistible to think, that with some change, they might have pulled off their Salamis.
Foreign involvement. I largely agree with the Maximum Leader’s professor in thinking that it would have taken an extraordinary confluence of events to cause France or Britain to become involved in the Civil War. The fact is that it served both of their interests to see the United States divided, or at least exhausted by internecine warfare. France’s ambitions in Mexico, and Britain’s more global interests, both were advanced by America self-destructing.
The reason it would have taken a unique set of circumstances to see foreign intervention is that two things would have to happen: a signal Confederate victory that would make at least diplomatic recognition reasonable, and something to overcome the continental power’s distaste (in Britain’s case, extreme distaste) for the South’s “peculiar institution.”
One thing that nearly did it was the Trent incident. The Federal Navy seized a British Mail Steamer carrying two Confederate diplomats. This violation of British sovereignty rather exercised the Brits. If it had been followed, a few months later by a victory in the Seven Days’ Battles, we might have seen British diplomatic recognition if not actual intervention. By Antietam, I think it was already too late, and Lincoln learned from the Trent Affair not to piss of the Brits.
Lee. All of the major military figures in the Civil War were flawed, well, because they were human. They are interesting because of those flaws. Jackson, a religious fanatic. Lee, the good man who chose the wrong side. Grant, the drunk who overcame the drink. Sherman, the depressive who was the most brilliant strategist of the war. WWI is not interesting in the way that the Civil War is largely because there are no contending minds on the opposing sides. The story of the war is the story of innocents thrown to the slaughter by the millions, for marginal gains and little strategic purpose over four years, to achieve a (nearly) Carthaginian peace that led inexorably to even greater slaughter. It’s depressing. The Civil War, while certainly not absent immense slaughter (the slaughter was all that the technology of the time could manage, and more) saw strategic contest, a conflict of wills that is inherently fascinating.
In the early stages, the brilliance of the team of Lee and Jackson is balanced by the frustration and tenacity of Lincoln. But as the war drew on, in the west arose Union commanders the equal of the best the Confederacy had to offer. The narrow window of opportunity for the South to make use of its advantage in leadership passed, and Sherman and Grant caught Lee in what is really the largest envelopment in military history, with Grant as the anvil in the north and Sherman coming up from the south as the hammer.
All of this would be fodder for the military enthusiast – and it is, of course. Jackson’s valley campaign, Sherman’s march to the sea, the duel between Lee and Grant – these are all celebrated campaigns that are studied in military academies throughout the world. What makes it all so endlessly fascinating is the moral dimension of the conflict. Now, most of that has been overlaid over what was thought by the participants at the time. Lee certainly didn’t feel that he was fighting solely to preserve slavery. From our perspective, however, it is a story of good v. evil, freedom v. slavery. A story made compelling by the lack of personal evil on the part of many leaders on the “bad” side, and by the incompetence, greed, insanity, drunkenness or timidness of many on the “good” side.
That, my friends, is good historical drama. Again, contrast with the Great War. Both sides were imperial powers leaping into war with no real thought for the consequences. Destroying, nearly, a civilization by accident, and in the process killing millions for no gain and in the end not resolving anything, in fact, setting the stage for yet more destruction. The leadership of the Allies was no more honorable, good, competent or nice to puppies than that of the Central Powers. There is little to distinguish the two sides, and that makes the war about as interesting as watching someone punch themselves in the face. Sickly amusing for a moment, but after a while you just want it to stop.
Anyway, that’s why I like the Civil War, and why the Maximum Leader is wrong. But at least he’s wrong in an interesting way.
March 2007
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