Don't Know Much About the Civil War

by Kenneth C. Davis

I started to read the first volume of Shelby Foote’s “The Civil War: A Narrative,” but I immediately realized I needed to start with more of an overview. So I put it back on the shelf and read this, and I am really glad I did! It was an excellent overview of what led to the war, the war itself, and a little about the aftermath. Here are my raw notes:

The Declaration of Independence originally claimed that King George had prevented the colonies from outlawing slavery. (10)

Why was it called “indentured” servitude? The contract was torn in half, with the master and servant each keeping a piece. When the term ended, the contract was pieced back together at the indentations. (12)

The Triangle Trade: Rum, cotton, and grain from New England were used to buy slaves in Africa. The slaves were taken to the West Indies, where they were sold to work on sugar plantations. The slave traders purchased sugar and molasses from the plantaions and sold it in New England, along with “seasoned” slaves who had been trained and broken on the sugar plantations. (16) Seasoned slaves had spent up to three years on the Caribbean sugar plantations, learning work assignments, etc.

Slaves were often POWs, criminals, or debtors in Africa, sold by African kings to Arab traders. On the voyage to the West Indies, the sick or sickly were tossed into the ocean. (19)

The government ran on the Articles of Confederation until 1787. There was no common currency - states printed their own money. No army. The Constitution was written in 1787, ratified in 1789. (33)

The British abolished the slave trade in 1807. (35)

The origin of “gerrymander”:

{

} Elbridge Gerry (1744-1814), a member of the Continental Congress as well as a signer of the Declaration of Independence from Massachusetts, didn't think all this compromising was such a good idea. He prophetically wrote to his wife, "I am exceedingly distressed at the proceedings of the Convention... They will lay the foundation of a Civil War." Later governor of Massachusetts and vice-president in James Madison's second term, Gerry refused to sign the Constitution. Apart from his prescient wisdom, he was immortalized in American politics when the Massachusetts legislature, at his di-rection, passed a law redistributing the electoral districts to ensure that Gerry's party would retain control. One Federalist complained that the oddly shaped districts Gerry had mapped out looked like salamanders, hence the political term gerrymander. (36) {

Jefferson and Franklin owned slaves and considered blacks inferior, although they also wrote and spoke against slavery.

In the 1790 census, there were 4 million people total, including 700k slaves and 60k free blacks (46). By the 1860 census, nearly 4 million slaves. (43)

Following the Louisiana Purchase, Thomas Jefferson thought Indians might adapt to farming and trading. (45)

Congress formed the American Colonization Society, which exported about 8000 blacks back to Africa (to Liberia). (54-55)

John C. Calhoun served consecutive terms as vice president under 2 different presidents, J.Q. Adams and then Andrew Jackson. He was a proponent of nullification, the idea that states had the right to nullify federal laws. (58)

On (62), the horrible story of Hetty, a pregnant slave who tied up a cow that then escaped. She was beaten so severely, the baby was born dead, and she died a little later.

As many as 5% of slaves could read. (64) Later, laws forbid slaves to read or write (68).

Slave rebellions (Gabriel, Denmark Vesey, Nat Turner) all involved murder. It’s hard to root for them of feel pity. (65-67)

Garrison (of Garrison Inn fame) began a radical abolitionist journal in 1831 - The Liberator. (69) A mob paraded Garrison around Boston with a noose around his neck in 1835. (72) A speech by Garrison in 1839 inspired Frederick Douglass. (75)

The Alamo (78) - 4000 Mexicans vs. 189 Texans. Thoreau’s “Civil Disobedience” was about going to jail rather than pay taxes to support the war with Mexico in 1846. (79) Texas became the 28th state in 1845 under Polk. (87)

Louisa May Alcott’s father started a utopian commune called Fruitlands. (86)

“Stationmasters” in the Underground Railroad included Douglass, Garrison, Allan Pinkerton (the detective), and Susan B. Anthony. (95-96)

Henry “Box” Brown escaped slavery by being shipped to an abolitionist in a wooden box. (97) That abolitionist, William Still, once met his own long-lost brother when he asked about their parents by name.

About 40k slaves escaped over several decades. Not many. (99)

Nullification cut both ways. Slave states wanted to ignore tariffs. Free states wanted to ignore laws about returning runaway slaves.

Zachary Taylor (president #12) died of cholera 16 months into his presidency in 1850 (104).

The commission that determined whether a black man was a slave or free got $10 if slave, $5 if free. “Guess what they usually decided?” (105)

Emersen called the Fugitive Slave Act “a filthy enactment.” (106)

Jefferson Davis was the US War Secretary under President Pierce. (113)

Evaporated milk was invented in 1853 to get milk to city-dwelling immigrant children. Later, huge sales to the Army during the civil war. (113)

Parties: Jefferson -> Jackson -> Democrats. Adams/Hamilton -> Federalists -> Whigs. (114) Know-Nothings were a secret society opposing foreigners and Catholics. Republican party formed in 1854 from Whigs, Free-Soil, Know-Nothings, and disaffected northern Democrats. An anti-slavery party – mainly opposed to slavery extending to new western territories. Wanted a strong central government. (116)

Lawrence, Kansas was named after Amos Lawrence, financial backer of an abolitionist organization brining settlers to KS following Douglas’s Kansas-Nebraska Act. Rev. Beecher (father of Harriet Beecher Stowe) sent rifles to abolitionist settlers, termed “Beecher’s Bibles.” (119)

After 800 pro-slavery Missourians raided Lawrence, John Brown retaliated. With his 4 sons, he dragged 5 pro-slavery settlers from their homes, shot them in front of their families, then hacked them to death with broadswords (!). (120) John Wilkes Booth was present at the hanging of John Brown (135).

The Lincoln-Douglas debates:

Their confrontation was nothing like the televised debates of modern presidential politics, in which the candidates are tossed softballs by a panel of reporters. This was two men going at it like prizefighters, slugging away, questioning each other, throwing insults in the heat and cold, sun and rain, of frontier Illinois. It was not high-minded and polite. It was often crude. It was nasty. And it enthralled the thousands of spectators who flocked to each of the open-air spectacles. (124)

“Lincoln walked a careful line. Believing that slavery was wrong, he also held that it was legal under the Constitution.” (126)

Lincoln’s voice and gestures:

The Hollywood image of Lincoln (Raymond Massey, Henry Fonda) is of a deep-voiced and elegant speaker. But in the report of Carl Schurz, Lincoln's voice "was not musical, rather high-keyed, and apt to turn into a shrill treble in moments of excitement. ... His gesture was awkward. He swung his long arms sometimes in a very ungraceful manner. Now and then he would, to give particular emphasis to a point, bend his knees and body with a sudden downward jerk, and then shoot up again with a vehemence that raised him to his tip-toes." (129)

Abolitionist events: Nat Turner’s rebellion - Virginia, 1831. John Brown’s raid on Harpers Ferry, (now West) Virginia, 1859.

A good summary of why the war came:

Why did this war come? There was a widely shared feeling among many in the Confederacy that their liberty and way of life were being overpowered by northern political, industrial, and banking powers. That defensive posture was whipped into flames with a race-baiting hysteria that politicians of the future Confederacy -- the slaveowning class, with the most to lose from emancipation—used to spread fear. There was a fear of blacks taking control and the certain sexual ravishing of the flower of southern womanhood if the slaves were allowed to go free... The potent mix of economic fear and racially tinged emotions coalesced over the question of slavery. Even those in the Confederacy who held no slaves thought the powers of the North had no right to tell them how to live their lives. With their political power diminishing in Congress as the free states were growing in number and population, the men who made the Confederacy turned to the one weapon they thought they had the right to use -- secession. (152)

Jefferson Davis’s CV better than Lincoln’s:

Lincoln's opposite had a much better résumé and seemed much better prepared to lead his "country" into war. A former war secretary, Davis has been called one of the most effective to hold that position, even though he is best mockingly remembered for a proposal to create camel-mounted cavalry patrols in the southwestern desert. In fact, he was largely responsible for professionalizing and modernizing the U.S. Army. An experienced soldier, Davis was a West Pointer, a decorated veteran and hero of the Mexican War.

Lincoln had none of these qualifications. His military experience was limited to leading a few volunteers in the Black Hawk War; Lincoln said he'd fought mosquitoes and led a charge on an onion patch. (153)

Consider this quote/paraphrase from page 154:

For a "country" that came into existence based on the protection of individual rights against a powerful central government, the Confederacy had allowed few people any say in electing a president. None of the six initial Confederate states had even chosen secession in popular voting... Their withdrawal from the Union had been decided in state conventions by 854 men selected by their legislatures. Of those, 157 had voted against -- so fewer than 700 mostly wealthy and upper-middle-class men had decided the destiny of 9 million people without benefit of an election. And Tennessee seceeded after a popular vote failed.

It is interesting how a few in authority can decide the fate of many. But I’m not sure it is a valid criticism. How common were popular elections for things like this? Senators, for example, were chosen by the parties in convention, not popularly elected, at this time. And did the United States break from Britain after holding a popular election? Of course not.

Jefferson Davis married Sarah Taylor, daughter of Zachary Taylor, somewhat against his wishes (though they did not elope). But she quickly caught malaria from the mosquitos on his plantation and died just five weeks later, in 1835. (155)

In 1861, JD was 55 years old and blind in one eye. (157)

The song Dixie was composed in New York. It was played at the inaugurations of both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln. (158)

Sam Houston was governor of Texas in 1861. Texas voted to leave the Union. Houston wanted it to be independent, not to join the Confederacy, and he was deposed as governor. (161) He refused to take an oath of allegience to the Confederacy, so his Lieutenant Gov. Edward Clark became governor.

When Beauregard attacked Fort Sumter, it was commanded by Anderson, Beauregard’s former teacher and a pro-slavery Unionist. (165)

No one died at Sumter at first. It was surrendered. But they were allowed to fire a cannon salute during the surrender, a cannon exploded, and two people died from that! (166)

It is not true that Lincoln provoked the Confederates into firing first. They had already done so before this, firing on a federal ship. (166)

Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan: Scott had been a big deal but was getting old and fat. He came up with a plan to blockade gulf ports and control the Mississippi River to squeeze the Confederacy economically. Boring, but effective. Lincoln ordered the blockade. The Union only had 3 warships at the time, but they had 136 by the end of the year. (168)

Robert E. Lee was first offered command of the Union army. (174) He declined it and commanded the Virginia state forces. Virginia was more important than the USA to Lee. He said slavery was evil. But he could not take up arms against Virginians. Arlington National Cemetary is on land that belonged to Lee’s in-laws, siezed by the Union during the war. (176)

On July 22, 1861, Congress resolved that the war was being fought to “preserve the Union,” not to abolish slavery. (180) I note things like this when they come up, because they seem to muddy the water of the modern understanding of the Civil War. Some were undoubtedly fighting to end slavery. Many were fighting to preserve the Union. Some fought for both. Anderson (at Ft. Sumter) was a pro-slavery Unionist. Lee said he personally opposed slavery as “a moral and political evil,” yet he owned slaves! (He inherited 10 slaves from his mother, and he married a woman whose family owned over 100 slaves, which he managed after his father-in-law’s death.) Near the end of the war, Lee recommended a “gradual and general emancipation.” Basically, people’s views were complex and sometimes contradictory. That keeps coming up.

Around Maryland, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus (the right to be tried before a court if you are arrested), so he could have secessionists indefinitely detained/imprisoned without charges. The Baltimore mayor, chief of police, and nine legislators “were arrested to prevent them from voting to secede from the Union!” (181-2)

Stonewall Jackson: an eccentric hypochondriac (190). He gave money to his church’s “colored Sunday School” (192)

Concurrent with the Civil War was China’s Taiping Rebellion – 20 million dead! (196)

The Trent Affair: Two confederate diplomats sneaked off to Havana, where they boarded a British ship, the Trent. A Union ship intercepted and took them prisoner. Britain was outraged, almost to the point of war with the Union. Lincoln released them, saying, “one war at a time.” (198)

“Radical Republicans” were a minority in the party who “viewed the war as a crusade against slavery, pure and simple.” (200)

Mary Todd Lincoln was from Kentucky. Four of Lincoln’s brothers-in-law served in the Confederacy. (204)

Lincoln’s goal was to “save the Union,” regardless of what that meant for slaves. (206)

The King of Siam wrote Lincoln offering to send a herd of war elephants to aid the Union. Someone should write this alternate history! (208)

Mary Todd Lincoln attended seances to try to communicate with her son Willie (211).

The Confederate warship Virginia was built by raising the settled Union ship Merrimac and adding iron sheeting as armor. When she easily sank the Union ship Cumberland (3/8/1862), the ancient tradition of wooden warships sank with it. (216)

“Quaker guns” = logs painted black to look like artillery from a distance. (209) McClellan was fooled by them and by men marching in a circle to look like a larger group. (243)

Quartermaster General Montgomery Meigs was an unsung Union hero. Supply and distribution was a major factor behind the Union’s ultimate success. (220)

Pinkerton failed to consolidate and dedupe reports, so he always overestimated the size of Confederate forces. (221)

Confederate General Albert Johnston was once Texas’s secretary of war. He died at the battle of Shiloh in Mississippi. Like Lee, both sides had offered him a high command, but he stuck with Texas.

There’s a passage written by a regimental musician, quoted on page 226, starting “I passed the corpse of a beautiful boy in gray who lay with his blond curls scattered about his face…” It reminds me of the part of The Great War and Modern Memory that discusses how WWI poets would refer to the soldiers as “boys” or “lads” with a kind of sad affection.

In 1862, a Union general issued an order freeing slaves in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina. Lincoln revoked it! But he went on to issue the Emancipation Proclamation in September. (241)

Louisa May Alcott served as a volunteer nurse in the war. (250) Women transitioned from abolition to suffrage after the war.

An extra copy of Lee’s orders/plan of attack was found wrapped around some cigars in a vacated Confederate camp, giving McClellan a huge advantage. (258)

Antietam = a creek in Maryland.

“The truth is, when bullets are whacking against tree trunks and solid shot are cracking skulls like eggshells, the consuming passion in the breast of the average man is to get out of the way.” (260)

Lincoln replaced McClellan with Burnside, from whom we get the term sideburns. (262)

Page 264 has the funny story of a Southern woman calling on Confederate General Barksdale while Union artillery fell all around her in Fredricksburg, VA. She walked to the house he was in. People told her to go take cover, but she said, “General Barksdale is a Southern gentlema, sir, and will not refuse to see a lady who has called upon him.” So Barksdale came, and she had a dead cow she wanted to donate to them so the Yankees wouldn’t get it.

** This really surprised me: The Emancipation Proclamation did NOT free all slaves, but only those in the rebel states (275). Slavery in the border states still in the Union was preserved (until the 13th amendment). These were Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri (see p. 476). In total, there were 23 Union states and 11 Confederate.

Thaddeus Lowe used a hot-air balloon to map the locations of Confederate units. He showed it to Hooker, who was impressed and went up in one of Lowe’s balloons. (282)

Stonewall Jackson died after he was wounded by friendly fire and had his arm amputated. His last words: “Let us cross over the river and rest under the shade of the trees.” (291)

Chancellorsville was the (unnamed) setting of The Red Badge of Courage. (293)

The Confederate army captured blacks in Pennsylvania and sold them south into slavery. (295)

“Copperheads” = northern Democrats who wanted a compromise with the Confederacy. (296)

Chamberlain (of Gettysburg fame) was a regular guy thrust into war, a professor of rhetoric and languages. (300)

** From 1863 to 1945, the city of Vicksburg, MI did not officially celebrate Independence Day. It was the date of their surrender to Grant in 1863! (310)

Captured black Union soldiers were sold to slave traders. White officers commanding them were killed. (344)

Nathan Bedford Forrest: Tough, mean-spirited, made his money in the slave trade. Massacred the Union army at Ft. Pillow. (344)

Grant demanded the Confederacy treat black and white prisoners the same. Consequence was the death sentence for thousands of Union prisoners. (349)

Grant (120k troops) vs. Lee (60k) reminds me of a chess game where one side has an advantage and is willing to trade down over and over. Attrition. (361)

June 3, 1864 at Cold Harbor, 6 to 7 thousand Union soldiers were killed during a single hour while assaulting Confederate trenches. (362)

Arkansas was a slave state in the Union. But they adopted an anti-slavery constitution in 1864. (364)

** Pre-Civil War, there was no IRS, and money was printed only by the states. (366)

Farragut, a Union naval commander attacking the port of Mobile, AL, is the one who said, “Damn the torpedos, go ahead!” Torpedos were beer kegs filled with powder and used as mines. (372)

A Senate colleague said this of Salmon Chase: “Chase is a good man, but his theology is unsound. He thinks there is a fourth person in the Trinity.” (374)

Sherman was named Tecumseh at birth (and called “Cumb”). At age 9, he was adopted by family friends after his father died. Then he was baptized William. Sherman later married his adopted sister, Ellen. (385)

He had no moral qualms about slavery but thought secession was treason. (386)

Nevada = “The Battle State,” because it gained statehood during the war. (392)

Even in victory, Grant felt sadness at the defeat of Lee, whom he considered a valiant, dignified opponent. (404)

** Five days after the surrender at Appomattox, General Anderson “raised the flag that he had lowered exactly four years earlier” at Ft. Sumter. (406)

• Lee’s surrender: April 9, 1865
• Sumter flag raised, Lincoln shot: April 14, 1865

In all, the Union had 360k dead and 275k wounded. The Confederacy had 258k dead and 100k wounded. (411)

** The same man, Dr. D.W. Bliss, attended to both Lincoln and Garfield after each was shot. (413)

The last fighting of the war occurred in Texas, near Brownsville, at the Battle of Palmito Ranch, where 80 Union attacked 350 Confederates while under an unofficial truce. Thirty Union died , no Confederates. A waste of life. (422)

December 24, 1875: The first KKK meeting was held, in Pulaski, TN. (423)

Freed blacks had few options. Many became sharecroppers - “a new form of bondage.” (427)

Sojourner Truth wrote that, “It is hard for the old slaveholding spirit to die. But die it must.” (429)

N.B. Forrest was the first Grand Wizard of the KKK. Later, he had a religious conversion and disavowed the Klan. (432)

Johnston (Conf. general) was a pallbearer for Sherman. He showed chivalry and respect, unwilling to keep his hat on in spite of the cold at Sherman’s funeral. He caught pneumonia and died a few weeks later. (442)

Lee signed an oath that would make him once again a US citizen, but it was never recorded. When it was found much later, Congress officially recorded his citizenship, in 1975! I wonder if today’s Congress would do this. (443)

Robert Todd Lincoln was present at the assassinations of both Garfield and McKinley. (444)