The Confederate Nation: 1861 to 1865 (41 page)
Read The Confederate Nation: 1861 to 1865 Online
Authors: Emory M. Thomas
Tags: #History, #United States, #American Civil War, #Non-Fiction
On April 12, Nathan Bedford Forrest and 1,500 cavalrymen attacked 557 Federals at Fort Pillow, an earthen fort on the east bank of the Mississippi about forty miles north of Memphis. The assault easily carried the works. The Southern horsemen found that about half of the garrison force were black, and most of the other half were Tennessee Unionists. Union casualties in the action were 331, compared to 100 Confederate. Major William F. Bradford, the Federal commander, charged that the Southerners had cut down unarmed Union soldiers while they were trying to surrender. Forrest contended that those shot in the aftermath of his assault were still resisting. Whatever the precise truth of the matter, the “Fort Pillow Massacre” like Dahlgren’s raid, brought the war closer to the reality of “no quarter.”
61
On July 30 cavalry units of Jubal Early’s command rode into Chambersburg, Pennsylvania. Early and a small army of 12,000 men had left Lee’s lines in early July to attempt to duplicate Jackson’s successes in the Shenandoah Valley in 1862. The Confederates were able to raise a siege at Lynchburg, march down the valley, cross into Maryland, and briefly threaten Washington. Then Early had to abandon his bluff and retreat. At Chambersburg one of Early’s Confederate cavalry commanders assembled the town fathers and demanded $500,000 in currency or $100,000 in gold to settle claims against the Union for property destroyed in the Shenandoah Valley. When the residents of Chambersburg failed to raise the money, the Southerners burned the town in retaliation.
62
On September 7, Sherman ordered all remaining residents of Atlanta to leave the city. In all, the Federals evicted about 1,600 people. Hood protested, and Confederates everywhere were indignant. Sherman replied, “If the people raise a howl against my barbarity and cruelty, I will answer that war is war and not popularity-seeking.”
63
On October 2 an outnumbered band of Confederate soldiers conducted a “miraculous” defense of the critical salt mines at Saltville in southwest Virginia. When the battle ended, however, the Southerners murdered their one hundred Federal prisoners, most of whom were black and some of whom were wounded.
64
Perhaps, after all, Quantrill had been right—or at least prophetic —when he argued with Secretary Seddon about raising the “black flag” and proclaiming “no quarter.” The “modern” war had all but eradicated the antique notions of honor and chivalry with which many Southerners entered the conflict. Yet the volume of outrage which greeted each new atrocity tale was evidence that antique notions prevailed on both sides of the Potomac.
In the South, Confederates confounded the new barbarism which marked the war in 1864; at the same time the war became most “mean,” a wave of religious revivals swept Confederate armies.
65
As their young country crumbled, Confederates revealed their desperation. They seemed to seek refuge in extremes—in the brutal license of war and in the peace and righteousness which was not of their world but the next. The Southern nation and its people were coming apart.
1
The proclamation and others like it exhorting either humiliation or thanksgiving is in James D. Richardson (ed.),
Messages and Papers of the Confederacy
, 2 vols. (Nashville, Tenn., 1906) I, 328.
2
See Frank E. Vandiver,
Ploughshares into Swords: Josiah Gorgas and Confederate Ordnance
(Austin, Tex. 1952), pp. 128–129; and Hudson Strode,
Jefferson Davis
, 3 vols.(New York, 1955–1964), II, 242–244.
3
The best general study of the Confederate church is James W. Silver,
Confederate Morale and Church Propaganda,
Norton edition (New York, 1967). A number of Articles by W. Harrison Daniel add solid detail. See for example Daniel’s “Southern Protestantism—1861 and After,”
Civil War History
V (1959), 276–282; “Virginia Baptists, 1861–1865,”
Virginia Magazine of History and Biography
LXXII (1964), 94–114; and “Southern Presbyterians in the Confederacy,”
North Carolina Historical Review,
XLIV (1967), 231–255. See also Benjamin J. Blied,
Catholics and the Civil War
(Milwaukee, 1945); and Bertram W. Korn, “The Jews of the Confederacy,”
American Jewish Archives,
XIII (1961), 3–90. Significantly religious thinking inspired anti-Confederate activities among Quakers, Unitarians, and other sects. See Samuel Horst,
Mennonites in the Confederacy: A Study in Civil War Pacificism
(Scottsdale, Pa., 1967). On Bishop Polk the standard biography is Joseph H. Parks,
General Leonidas Polk, C.S.A.: The Fighting Bishop
(Baton Rouge, La., 1962).
4
For titles and locations see Marjorie Lyle Crandall,
Confederate Imprints: A Check List Based Principally on the Collection of the Boston Athenaeum,
2 vols. (Boston, 1955); and Richard Harwell,
More Confederate Imprints,
2 vols. (Richmond, Va., 1957) II.
5
Emory M. Thomas, The Confederate State of Richmond: A Biography of the Capital (Austin, Tex., 1971), p. 131.
6
Silver,
Church Propaganda,
pp. 93–101; Emory M. Thomas,
The Confederacy as a Revolutionary Experience
(Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1971), pp. 116–117.
7
The best work on Quantrill and his raid is Albert Castel,
William Clarke Quantrill: His Life and Times
(New York, 1962).
8
Castel,
Quantrill,
pp. 101–103.
9
Ibid”
pp. 103–121.
10
Ibid.,
pp. 122–143. See also Richard S. Brownlee,
Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla Warfare in the West, 1861–1865
(Baton Rouge, La., 1958), 110–141, for a discussion of Quantrill, the raid, and its implications for the Confederacy.
11
Castel,
Quantrill,
p. 131.
12
Duringjuly Vice-President Stephens went to Washington to deliver a letter from Davis to Lincoln complaining of United States troops “who violate all the rules of war by carrying on hostilities … against noncombatants, aged men, women and children … [and who] destroy all private property within their reach….” Richardson (ed.),
Messages and Papers,
II, 343. See also James Z. Rabun (ed.),
A Letter for Posterity: Alexander Stephens to His Brother Linton, June 3, 1864
(Athens, Ga., 1954).
13
On this issue see especially Albert Castel, “The Guerrilla War,”
Civil War Times Illustrated
(special issue, 1974); and William L. Barney,
Flawed Victory: A
Ne
w Perspective on the Ctvil War
(New York, 1975), pp. 18–19.
14
On Mosby see Charles W. Russell (ed.), The Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby (Boston, 1917); and Mosby’s War Reminiscences and Stuart’s Cavalry Campaigns (Boston, 1887). On Morgan see Cecil F. Holland, Morgan and his Raiders: A Biography of the Confederate General (New York, 1942); and Howard Swiggett, The Rebel Raider: A Life of John Hunt Morgan (Indianapolis, Ind., 1937).
15
Mosby, for example, according to legend permitted no profanity among his troopers with one exception. Upon, bidding an enemy to surrender, the Confederate might command, “Surrender, you Yankee Son-of-a-bitch!"J. Bryan III,
Sword over the Mantle: The Civil War and I
(New York, 1960), p. 27.
16
See Raimondo Luraghi, “The Civil War and the Modernization of American Society: Social Structure and Industrial Revolution in the Old South before and during the War,”
Civil War History,
XVIII (1972), 246–248.
17
Thomas L. Connelly,
Autumn of Glory: The Army of Tennessee, 1862–1865
(Baton Rouge, La., 1971), pp. 69–111.
18
Ibid.,
pp. 112–134; and Fairfax Downey,
Storming the Gateway: Chattanooga, 1863
(New York, 1960), pp. 66–74.
19
Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 137–165.
20
Ibid.,
pp. 166–200.
21
Ibid,
pp. 201–234; Glen Tucker, “The Battle of Chickamauga,”
Civil War Times Illustrated,
VIII (1969), 4–46. Downey,
Storming the Gateway,
pp. 93–129.
22
“Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 235–272.
23
Ibid.,
pp. 272–278; Downey,
Storming the Gateway,
pp. 156–195.
24
See Douglas S. Freeman,
Lee’s Lieutenants: A Study in Command,
3 vols. (New York, 1942–1944), III, 206–279; and Jay Luvaas and Wilbur S. Nye, “The Campaign that History Forgot! Mine Run,”
Civil War Times Illustrated,
VIII (1969), 11–36.
25
Robert L. Kerby, Kirby Smith’s Confederacy: The Trans-Mississippi South, 1863–1865 (New York, 1972), pp. 51–54, 209–281.
26
See Bell I. Wiley,
The Road to Appomattox,
Atheneum edition (New York, 1968), pp. 61–70.
27
Frank L. Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy: Foreign Relations of the Confederate States of America, second edition (Chicago, 1959), pp. 467–194; D. P. Crook, The North, the South, and the Powers, 1861–1865 (New York, 1974), pp. 330–332.
28
Charles P. Cullop,
Confederate Propaganda in Europe: 1861–1865,
(Coral Gables, Fla., 1969), pp. 77–84.
29
Owsley, King Cotton Diplomacy, pp. 489–490.
30
Richard Cecil Todd,
Confederate Finance
(Athens, Ga., 1954), pp. 197, 111–112.
31
See Mary Elizabeth Massey,
Ersatz in the Confederacy
(Columbia, S.C., 1952), pp. 3–31, 159–173.
32
Vandiver, Ploughshares into Swords, pp. 201–202.
33
Wilfred Buck Yearns, The Confederate Congress (Athens, Ga., 1960), pp. 58–59; Thomas B. Alexander and Richard E. Beringer, The Anatomy of the Confederate Congress: A Study of the Influences of Member Characteristics on Legislative Voting Behavior, 1861–1865 (Nashville, Tenn., 1972), pp. 44–45.
34
Lee made plain his reluctance to undertake command of the Army of Tennessee in a letter to Davis on December 7. (Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin [eds.],
The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee
[New York, 1961], p. 642.) However on December 9 the general indicated in a letter to J. E. B. Stuart the strong possibility of his departure. “I am called to Richmond this morning by the President. I presume the rest will follow. My heart and thought will always be with the army.” See Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 281–288; Thomas Lawrence Connelly and Archer Jones,
The Politics of Command: Factions and Ideas in Confederate Strategy
(Baton Rouge, La., 1973), pp. 141— 143; and Gilbert E. Govan and James W. Livingood,
A Different Valor: The Story of General Joseph E. Johnston, C.S.A.
(New York, 1956), pp. 235–239.
35
Connelly,
Autumn of Glory
, pp. 289–292; Govan and Livingood,
Different Valor,
pp. 240–260.
36
Richardson,
Messages and Papers,
I, 370; James A. Seddon to Jefferson Davis, November 26, 1863,
War of the Rebellion: A Compilation of the Official Records of the Union and Confederate Armies,
70 vols, in 127 (Washington, D.C., 1880–1901), ser. IV, II, 998–999;
Ibid.,
III, 208.
37
Albert Burton Moore,
Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy
(New York, 1927), pp. 308–312.
38
Ibid.
, pp. 312–317.
39
On Cleburne, Howell and Elizabeth Purdue’s
Pat Cleburne, Confederate General: A Definitive Biography
(Hillsboro, Tex., 1973) does not justify the subtitle. Probably the best source on the man is still Irving A. Buck,
Cleburne and His Command
(Thomas Robson Hay [ed.], Jackson, Tenn., 1958).
40
The text of “Cleburne’s Memorial” is in
0. R.,
ser. I, LII, pt. 2, 586–592; and Robert F. Durden,
The Gray and the Black, the Confederate Debate on Emancipation
(Baton Rouge, La., 1972), pp. 53–63. See also Irving A. Buck, “Negroes in Our Army,”
Southern Historical Society Papers
XXXI (1903), 215.
41
0.R.
, ser. IV, I, 1020; XV, 556–557, 559; II, 767, 947.
42
Buck, “Negroes in Our Army,” 216; Buck,
Cleburne,
pp. 189–190; Walker to Davis, January 12, 1864,
O.R.,
ser. I, LII, pt. 2, 595; Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 318–321.
43
Seddon to Johnston, January 24, 1864,
OR,
ser. 1, LII, pt. 2,606–607; Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 320–321.
44
Davis made a special plea to Congress on February 3, 1864 (Richardson [ed.],
Messages and Papers,
I, 395–400). Congress responded with the suspension law on February 15. When the act expired on July 31, Davis was unwilling or unable to renew it. See Yearns,
Confederate Congress,
pp. 156–160; and John B. Robbins, “The Confederacy and the Writ of Habeas Corpus,”
Georgia Historical Quarterly
LV (1971), 83–101.
45
Todd, Confederate Finance, pp. 148–153.
46
Ibid.,
pp. 111–114. Public opinion was generally favorable toward currency reduction, at least in its early stages. For example, Whiggish editor E. H. Cushing in the Houston
Daily Telegraph
applauded congressional fiscal courage and added, “if it be done, best be done quickly” (March 21, 1864).
47
See Louis B. Hill, State Socialism in the Confederate States of America (Charlottesville, Va., 1936).
48
For extended statements of this thesis see Frank E. Vandiver,
Rebel Brass
(Baton Rouge, La., 1956), pp. 18–23; and Charles W. Ramsdell,
Behind the Lines in the Southern Confederacy
(Baton Rouge, La., 1944), pp. 113–120. Certainly significant to the Confederacy’s last year is Vandiver’s contention (
Basic History of the Confederacy
[Princeton, 1962], p. 96) that, “The Confederate States was first exhausted, then defeated.”
49
For a good general statement of the Confederacy’s circumstance and prospects in the spring of 1864 see Allan Nevins,
The War for Union,
IV,
The Organized War to Victory, 1864–1865,
4 vols. (New York, 1959–1971), 1–18.
50
See Bruce Catton,
Grant Takes Command
(Boston, 1968), pp. 104–178.
51
Clifford Dowdey,
Lee’s Last Campaign
(Boston, 1960); Edward Steere,
The Wilderness Campaign
(Harrisburg, Pa., 1960); and Freeman,
Lee’s Lieutenants,
III, 342–410.
52
On Stuart’s death see John W. Thomason, Jr.,
Jeb Stuart
(New York, 1930), pp. 498–501. Freeman maintains that deaths of talented commanders were crucial and that because of the attrition by June of 1864 “Lee did not have a sufficient number of qualified subordinates to maintain the discipline and to direct the operations of any Army.”
(Lee’s Lieutenants,
III, XIV). See also Charles W. Ramsdell, “General Robert E. Lee’s Horse Supply, 1862–1865,”
American Historical Review
XXXV (1930), 758–777.
53
Freeman,
Lee’s Lieutenants,
III, 434–514, 528–538.
54
“Thomas,
Confederate Slate of Richmond,
pp. 176–178, 190–191.
55
Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 326–360; Govan and Livingood,
A Different Valor,
pp. 261–295; Joseph E. Johnston,
Narrative of Military Operations,
ed. by Frank E. Vandiver (Bloomington, Ind., 1959), pp. 262–344.
56
Connelly
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 361–416; Govan and Livingood,
A Different Valor,
pp. 295–322.
57
Lee summarized his opinion of the situation by telegraph in four sentences: “It is a bad time to release the commander of an army situated as that of Tennessee. We may lose Atlanta and the army too. Hood is a bold fighter. I am doubtful as to other qualities necessary.” Lee to Davis telegram, July 12, 1864, in Clifford Dowdey and Louis H. Manarin (eds.),
The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee
(New York, 1961), p. 821; Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 417–426; biographies of Hood include Richard O’Connor,
Hood: Cavalier General
(New York, 1949); and John P. Dyes,
The Gallant Hood
(Indianapolis, Ind., 1950). A recent, somewhat more charitable than traditional, interpretation of Hood’s command before Atlanta is in Lt. Col. Joseph P. Mitchell’s
Military Leaders of the Civil War
(New York, 1972), pp. 193–214. Hood’s own story is in his memoir
Advance and Retreat,
ed. by Richard N. Current (Bloomington, Ind., 1959).
58
Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 429–469; Hood,
Advance and Retreat,
pp. 161–217; and Errol MacGregor Clauss, “The Atlanta Campaign 18 July-2 September, 1864,” Ph.D. dissertation (Emory University, 1965).
59
Connelly,
Autumn of Glory,
pp. 470–180.