Recreating the past for live events, TV and film
By Howard Giles Left click over small photos for enlargements.
The Civil War was the bloodiest conflict ever fought in America, resulting in 600,000 deaths through battlefield casualties, disease and exposure. In just two day’s combat at Shiloh in April 1862, more men fell than in every previous American war combined. Other great battles - the Seven Days, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Gettysburg, Chickamauga, the Wilderness, the Crater and Franklin to name but a few - all exacted a terrible price in death and human misery. The conflict was a tragedy because like in our own civil war 240 years before, brother fought brother and father fought son.
Britain and France came close to entering the conflict on the side of the Confederacy. However, astute diplomacy by the North combined with the South’s obstinate refusal to abolish slavery – an institution loathed by Britain and banned within the empire for many years – ultimately sealed the doom of the fledgling Confederate States, outnumbered, outgunned and out produced by the industrial North. Although European troops did not intervene, an estimated 50,000 Britons – Scots, Irish, English and Welsh, fought as volunteers on both sides. There were even pro or anti Union riots in the streets of Britain. Industrial towns in Yorkshire and Lancashire suffered from the Union naval blockade of southern cotton. Confederate blockade-runners were built and crewed in British ports. British manufacturing companies supplied arms to both sides, but primarily to the South.
The causes of war are always complex but in 1860s America it largely came down to two issues, slavery and the preservation of the Union. The industrial North was growing richer as industry boomed, fuelled by cheap immigrant labour. Bereft of these resources, the primarily agricultural and relatively sparsely-populated South relied on slaves, so increasingly resented the prominent Northern politicians that insisted that this system was evil that should be stamped out. Most southerners did not actually own any slaves, but none the less clung to the parochial belief that each individual state should decide it’s own policies rather than the federal government in Washington, (perhaps naively, perhaps deliberately depending on the person) downplaying the moral implications of slavery. When it came to the fight, most Confederates took up arms for the principal of States’ rights rather than slavery, and once the war started, to defend their home state from northern invasion. The North would initially primarily fight to preserve the Union but soon took "the moral high ground" by also declaring that they would free the southern slaves.
When the liberally-minded Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860, this was the final straw for the southern states, which seceded from the Union to form the Confederate States of America. Outrage turned to belligerence in the North, which in turn had many southerners clamoring for war, deluding themselves with cries such as “one southern boy can whip 10 Yankee hirelings!” Those of a sounder disposition however could not see how they - with no standing army or navy - could possibly win against the odds, but none the less at 4.30am on April 12th 1861, Confederate gunners opened fire on Federal - held Fort Sumter, situated in the middle of Charleston Harbour. The only fatal casualty was a horse, an almost bloodless start to a ghastly war that few could dream could be so long, hard and bloody.
Without direct military support
from European powers, the answer is frankly, no. Speculation about European
military assistance is interesting but largely pointless as Britain did not and
could not ally themselves with a slave state, especially after Abraham Lincoln’s
government shrewdly passed the Emancipation Act in 1862, which theoretically
freed all slaves in the South. Without Britain, France (already heavily
embroiled in Mexico, propping up the regime of the Austrian-born Emperor
Maximillian) would not become involved. The Confederates were on their own and
however successful they might have been in the short term, they could not hope
to win a protracted war. With vast reserves of men and munitions, all the North
had to do was, in the words of American Civil War historian Shelby Foote, “take
the other arm from out behind their back”. Many Confederates must have realised
this, but like the gifted General Robert E Lee, fought grimly on in defence of
their State and Country (in that order) and in the hope of a major victory that
would bring the North to the negotiating table. Despite every effort, they
failed.
Right from the start the Union was on the attack, seeking a single overwhelming victory and triumphal march into the Confederate capital at Richmond, temptingly located only 60 miles from Washington. However, this proved rather harder than envisaged with the first battle at Manassas on 18 July 1861 ending in the complete rout of the northern forces. A second campaign a year later also achieved very little. Neither side could initially muster more than a tiny number of experienced troops and however well drilled in camp, once on campaign the vast majority of soldiers and officers could do nothing more than muddle through. Yet within a few years, those soldiers that survived became amongst the most professional in the world. Huge numbers though never saw the end of the conflict, dying on a thousand battlefields in actions that usually ended up as indecisive slaughters of the kind that would become all too familiar in World War One, 50 years later.
Casualties were high because of a
mismatch between modern weapons and relatively unsophisticated tactics, used
through necessity by armies of inexperienced volunteers. Rifled muskets using a
percussion cap priming system were far more efficient and accurate than the
smoothbore flintlock weapons they replaced. However, troops still fought in the
same shoulder to shoulder formations that Napoleonic armies had used long
before. Most battles quickly degenerated into murderous firefights at close
range, each side blazing away until one or the other withdrew. Even later in the
war when tactics had been refined and the spade took over as the main “weapon”
as the armies dug in, generals often needlessly threw away the lives of their
men in massed attacks.
Only absolutely dreadful marksmanship by both Union and Confederate soldiers kept the casualties lower than they should have been but even so, such was the intensity of fire that it was not unusual for regiments to lose a shockingly high percentage of their men in a single action. Casualties were actually no greater than in Napoleon’s famous battles of annihilation, but American Civil War battles were not usually decisive because neither side could deliver a knock-out blow. As such, most actions rarely seemed to achieve more than another pile of bodies. Even when a decisive victory was achieved, the enemy nearly always managed to limp away to fight another day. Inevitably, it became a dreadful war of attrition.
Generalship varied enormously. Initially, the Union armies suffered from indecisive and lacklustre leadership, negating their many practical advantages over an outnumbered and usually poorly equipped enemy. When Robert E Lee took over the Army of Northern Virginia in 1862, he took full advantage of this, setting in train a series of brilliant if sometimes reckless and costly victories over the Union, whose forces inevitably retreated even when tactically victorious. Time and time again Lee’s bold tactics completely unnerved the commanding Union generals, with the Confederates even taking the fight into northern territory in 1862 and again the year after. But Lee’s luck could not hold forever and he eventually came to grief on third day of the Battle of Gettysburg on 3 July 1863. Overconfident, he ordered a mass attack against the heart of the strong Union position. Pickett’s Charge, as it became known, was a disaster, with thousands of grey-clad troops mown down as they sought to break the waiting blue line. Lee, an honourable man, apologised to the survivors for his error, then retreated from Union territory. Although his men idolised him, he could not stave off defeat forever. From then on, it could only be a slow, painful march to defeat.
The next day, 4 July, the nation’s birthday, the key western Confederate town of Vicksburg on the River Mississippi fell to Union General US Grant after a long siege. The Confederacy was cut in half and was doomed. The fourth of July was not celebrated in Vicksburg for another 81 years.
On 18 July, 600 men of the 54th Massachusetts - all black soldiers (although led by white officers) - led an assault on Confederate Fort Wagner, Charleston. Although the attack failed and they suffered 40% casualties, such was the resolution and courage of these troops that more regiments were authorised. In time, 185,000 black soldiers - many of them liberated slaves - joined the army, a significant contribution to victory and to freedom for all southern slaves. In the Confederacy, forward-thinking soldiers such as General Patrick R Cleburne suggested offering slaves freedom in return for enlisting as soldiers but in 1863 this was just too radical a plan to be agreed. By the time it finally was - out of sheer desperation - it was too late.
During 1864, Grant - now Union Commander-in-Chief - gradually squeezed the life out of the South with ruthless “scorched earth” tactics and a total (public at least) disregard for his own casualties - the Union could replace men whilst the Confederates could not. Strangulation of the South was completed by the Union naval blockade, which despite the activities of bold blockade-runners including some British-built and crewed, ensured that vital supplies of ammunition and weapons could not get through.
Richmond fell in April 1865 and a
few days later, the Army of Northern Virginia was cornered and forced to
surrender, no more than a shadow of its former self. One Confederate "brigade"
consisted of just 8 men, all that was left from well over 1000 that had joined
the colours almost exactly 4 years previously. Meanwhile, the Confederate army
in the West had been pointlessly thrown away in a series of disastrous actions
that were even more costly than Pickett’s Charge. On hearing of the defeat in
the East, they mostly surrendered too, although some individual units continued to fight on for a
while.
The North had won. The Union was saved. Slavery was on its knees and would be abolished. But over half a million men had perished. The American Civil War was one of the most costly conflicts in history. If you are able to watch re-enactors recreating this war at a historic house or similar venue this summer, it is worth remembering that they seek to keep alive the memory, honour and valour of the millions of brave men that fought and often died for their cause, North or South.
This page © Howard Giles, 2003
Updated 15 February 2006