The Civil War: A Narrative, Vol. 1

by Shelby Foote

I tried to group related notes under some headings, but this is still something of a jumble. This book took me many months to finish, but I’m glad to have read it. You get a real feel for the people involved. What you do not get with this book are basically any timelines or headers indicating the names of battles. You read about a battle, and later you realize it was The Battle of Bull Run or whatever. Being a Civil War novice, I think a little extra notation like that would have helped me. On the other hand, the people fighting the war didn’t have that, so maybe it makes things more realistic.

Jefferson Davis

As a junior officer at West Point, Jefferson Davis once escaped murderous Indians in a canoe by improvising a sail. (8)

No pork:

He would not unbend; he would engage in no log-rolling. In a cloakroom exchange, when he stated his case supporting a bill for removing obstructions from the river down near Vicksburg, another senator, who had his pet project too, interrupted to ask, "Will you vote for the Lake appropriations?" Davis responded: "Sir, I make no terms. I accept no compromises. If when I ask for an appropriation, the object shall be shown to be proper and the expenditure constitutional, I defy the gentleman, for his conscience' sake, to vote against it. If it shall appear to him otherwise, then I expect his opposition, and only ask that it shall be directly, fairly, and openly exerted. The case shall be presented on its single merit; on that I wish to stand or fall. I feel, sir, that I am incapable of sectional distinction upon such subjects. I abhor and reject all interested combinations." He would hammer thus at what he thought was wrong, and continue to hammer, icy cold and in measured terms, long after the opposition had been demolished, without considering the thoughts of the other man or the chance that he might be useful to him someday. (12)

Sam Houston said Davis was “ambitious as Lucifer and cold as a lizard.” (13)

He was Zachary Davis’s Secretary of War. (14) In 1855, he convinced Congress to appropriate $30,000 for purchasing camels for military use in the American southwest (more info). This was after the US purchased Arizona and New Mexico in 1854 (“the Gadsden Purchase” – named for diplomat James Gadsden, whose grandfather Christopher Gadsden designed the famous Gadsden flag).

He hoped to be arrested for treason, so that the idea that states could secede could be tried in federal court. (16)

People “wanted a look at his face, the thin lips and determined jaw, the hollow cheeks with their jutting bones, the long skull behind the aquiline nose; ‘a wizard physiognomy,’ one called it.” (17) This look progressed during the war: Davis “had predicted a long war. Now he was showing the erosive effects of living with the fulfilment of his prediction. He was thinner, almost emaciated; “gaunted” was the southern word. His features were sharper, the cheeks more hollow, the blind left eye with its stone-gray pupil in contrast to the lustrous gleam of the other.” (140)

Davis had to dismiss from the army an old friend, based on a confidential message from a general. Rather than betray the confidence, he had to be rather cold to his old friend. No one knew why at the time, and he couldn’t explain himself without betraying the general’s confidence – he wouldn’t even betray that there was something to betray. (123, 127) These are hard situations, and a good reminder to apply the 8th commandment.

Monstrous descriptions of Davis and Lincoln:

On the one hand there was Davis, "ambitious as Lucifer," with his baleful eyes and bloodless mouth, cerebral and lizard-cold, plotting malevolence into the small hours of the night. On the other there was Lincoln, "the original gorilla," with his shambling walk and sooty face, an ignorant rail-splitter catapulted by long-shot politics into an office for which he had neither the experience nor the dignity required. (164)

By the spring of 1862, the Confederate economy was in shambles. “To be a patriot, you must hate Davis.” A black coffin and a noose were left one morning near the Executive Mansion. They tried price fixing, but people just stole. Food prices soared and cotton dropped with no way to export (see the Anaconda Naval Blockade below).

Davis was “not skilled as an arbitrator; he had too much admiration and sympathy for those who would not yield.” (396)

The same day Norfolk, VA was evacuated (May 9, 1862), Davis was baptized and confirmed into the Episcopal faith at St. Paul’s in Richmond, VA (416). This site says that he could not remember if he had been baptized as a child, so he wanted to be baptized then to be sure.

Abraham Lincoln

Daniel Boone led his grandfather, also named Abraham Lincoln, over the Cumberland Gap into Kentucky in 1779. (20)

His mother Nancy “died of the milksick” when he was nine (21). This means she died after drinking milk from a cow that had eaten a poisonous root.

From age 40-45, he was out of politics, not intending to return. “It was a time for study, a time for self-improvement. He went back and drilled his way through the first six books of Euclid, as an exercise to discipline his mind.” Turned from politics to the law. (25)

Lincoln came out of retirement in 1854 after the Kansas-Nebraska Bill. This was written by Stephen Douglas and created the territories of KS and NE and repealed the Missouri Compromise. Lincoln debated Douglas seven times in 1854 about the bill and about slavery. (These were not the famous “Lincoln-Douglas debates,” though - those came 4 years later.)

Douglas wanted the issue to be popular sovereignty, but Lincoln saw slavery as the crux:

Wet with sweat, his shirt clung to his shoulders and big arms. He had written his speech out beforehand, clarifying in his own mind his position as to slavery, which he saw as the nub of the issue — much to the discomfort of Douglas, who wanted to talk about "popular sovereignty," keeping the issue one of self-government, whereas Lincoln insisted on going beyond, making slavery the main question. Emerging from his long retirement, having restored his soul, he was asking himself and all men certain questions. And now the Lincoln music began to sound.

"The doctrine of self-government is right, absolutely and eternally right; but it has no just application, as here attempted. Or perhaps I should rather say that whether it has such just application depends upon whether a Negro is not or is a man. If he is not a man, why in that case he who is a man may, as a matter of self-government, do just as he pleases with him. But if the Negro is a man, is it not to that extent a total destruction of self-government to say that he too shall not govern himself?" (27)

So was the key issue in the war slavery or states’ rights? Is making it about states’ rights just a way of avoiding talking about the real issue? It seems that way here. The argument hinges on “whether a Negro is a man” – similar to the abortion argument.

For the 1860 election, “Lincoln himself did not campaign. No presidential candidate ever had, such action being considered incommensurate with the dignity of the office.” (33) But Douglas did campaign, fearing that the election could bring a war. All candidates ran on platforms for preserving the Union.

Lincoln did not carry any of the fifteen southern states. In five, he did not receive a single vote - not one! I don’t mean just electoral votes. He received “not a single popular ballot in five of them, even from a crank” in those five. But he was elected. Then, between his election in November 1860 and taking office in March 1861, South Carolina and six other states seceded. (34)

Lincoln did not attend his own father’s funeral, nine years earlier. (35) About to leave for Washington, he did go back home to say goodbye to his widowed step-mother (Sally Bush Lincoln).

When Lincoln took office, New Jersey, California, and Oregon were talking about seceding. New York City, even, was “southern in sentiment” and “would have much to gain from independence.” (43) Moderates said to let the South depart in peace. Extremists declared, “No union with slaveholders!” – the same outcome. They said, “The Union was not formed by force, nor can it be maintained by force.”

On the other hand, the economy! Eastern manufacturers needed the protective tarrif, which made European goods so expensive, or else they would lose the South as a market.

In the past, Lincoln said people should be free to break away from one government and form their own:

At the time of the Mexican War he had spoken plainly for all to hear: "Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right — a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can may revolutionize and make their own so much of the territory as they inhabit." (66)

Lincoln would go back on his word to McClellan if that’s what was needed to win:

Lincoln was out to win the war; and that was all he was out to do, for the present. Unfettered by any need for being or not being a gentleman, **he would keep his word to any man only so long as keeping it would help to win the war**. If keeping it meant otherwise, he broke it. He kept no promise, anyhow, any longer than the conditions under which it was given obtained. And if any one thing was clear in this time when treason had become a household word, it was that the conditions of three months ago no longer obtained. McClellan would have to go forward or go down. (248)

Lincoln led his first field campaign, to take Norfolk, VA. The Rebels had evacuated, but some were still destroying things they didn’t want to leave for the Federals. So, the mayor met the Federals and insisted on reading some very long documents to them – giving the Rebels time to complete the demolition – and then handed over the keys to the city! (413-14)

He wrote a public letter responding to newspaper editor Horace Greeley. Greeley had written that Lincoln was not doing his duty, which was first of all to announce to the world that the purpose of this war was to put an end to slavery. Lincoln’s response (706) was that “I would save the Union,” with or without slavery. He closes stating that he considers saving the Union his “official duty,” but that he personally wishes for all men to be free.

Overwhelmed with people seeking favors: “Now, my man, go away. I cannot attend to all these details. I could as easily bail out the Potomac with a spoon!” (771)

Lincoln wrote well but with much effort. Our presidents today use speech writers when have to deliver a speech. Writing is thinking, and in bypassing the labor, they bypass its benefits. If we had a president who writes, we would have one who thinks, which seems like a big step forward regardless of party. (804)

Lincoln’s ability with words was one of his weapons. But that weapon only works if people will read your words. Its effect is blunted because fewer people read.

Mary Todd Lincoln

For Mary Todd Lincoln, being First Lady involved more trials than joys. She clung to her Kentucky gentility, but the social grace of Washington had departed with the Southerners. Her family in KY was divided, so she was accused of treason. Her son Willie died of a fever, and her husband told her she might have to go to a lunatic asylum. (251-2)

Habeas Corpus

Lincoln raided telegraph offices to sieze communications (67), dragged men from their homes and threw them into dungeons, and held them without explanation. “Writs of habeas corpus were denied.” He paid money from the national treasure to private individuals to buy “instruments of war,” all without congressional sanction. (67) Seizing telegraphs reminds me of gov’t wiretapping or tracking phone metadata (cf. Edward Snowden).

“Five days after the inaugural in which he [Jefferson Davis] had excoriated Lincoln for doing the same thing, and scorned the northern populace for putting up with it, he suspended the privilege of habeas corpus,” first in Norfolk, then in Richmond. (231)

John C. Frémont (Union)

Frémont had been the first Republican presidential candidate, losing to Buchanan. He proclaimed emancipation in Missouri on his own initiative. Lincoln asked him to change this, but Frémont sent his wife to DC with his response, saying the proclamation would stand. Lincoln ordered it revoked for the sake of the border states, over the objections of abolitionists. He later relieved Frémont of command (98) due to graft, calling him unfit for duty. Grant said Frémont was cryptic and gave mysterious instructions.

McClellan (Union)

He had only voted once, and that was for Stephen Douglas. He had Democratic leanings (109).

Lincoln said sending troops to McClellan was like trying to shovel fleas across a barn lot; so few seemed to get there. (530) McClellan wrote a letter to Lincoln advising on strategy, “an exegesis of the conservative position,” which convinced Lincoln to replace him with Halleck (533). The was “was going to be a harder war from here on out.”

Always asking for more troops. Lincoln: “If by some magic he (Lincoln) could reinforce McClellan with 100,000 troops today, he said, Little Mac would be delighted and would promise to capture Richmond tomorrow; but when tomorrow came he would report the enemy strength at 400,000 and announce that he could not advance until he got another 100,000 reinforcements.” (594)

Lincoln wanted to remove McClellan, but he saw the Army of the Potomac as “General McClellan’s bodyguard” and feared a mutiny. (749) McClellan was too cautious. Lincoln: “If we never try, we shall never succeed.” (751)

Lincoln gave McClellan one last chance, but the Confederates got around him again, and he was ordered to hand over the Army of the Potomac to Burnside. B didn’t want it and tried pleading incompetence! But the order stood. (757)

Lee considered McClellan the ablest Federal general he had opposed throughout the war. (757) When McClellan was replaced by Burnside, Lee expressed regret. “We always understood each other so well. I fear they may continue to make these changes till they find someone whom I don’t understand.” (781)

Grant (Union)

Leadership: When McClernand’s men were demoralized by a temporary setback, Grant saw the situation for what it was: the enemy was trying to escape, was desperate, and the first side to attack would be victorious. “The men only wanted someone to give them a command.”

“His beard, which formerly had reached down past the second button on his coat, had been clipped short. It seemed to the soldiers, observing him now, a gesture not unlike that of a man rolling up his sleeves in preparation for hard work.” (322)

Lincoln re: Grant: “I can’t spare this man. He fights.” (760)

“Grant’s mind had emerged from the tunnel it had entered after Shiloh.” (764) I know this feeling.

Nathan Bedford Forrest (Confederacy)

“In his first fight… the forty-year-old Forrest improvised a classic double-envelopment, combined it with a frontal assault – classic maneuvers which he could not identify by name and of which he had most likely never heard – and scattered the survivors of a larger enemy force.” (172) No military education, but natural ability.

Stonewall Jackson (Confederacy)

Jackson “was a most secretive man, agreeing absolutely with Frederick II’s remark, ‘If I thought my coat new my plans I would take it off and burn it.’” (224)

Jackson wouldn’t write or even mail a letter on a Sunday. (superstition) (270)

A “one-idea-ed man” (429). “Two things he believed in absolutely: the ‘vigorous use of the bayonet and the blessings of Providence.” On 426 he gave literal marching orders – how many minutes to march and even how to rest (prone, so as to “rest all over”). The men thought this was nutty micromanagement, but it “transformed them into such rapid marchers that they became known as ‘foot cavalry.’”

Asked why he gave up drinking, he said, “Why, sir, because I like the taste of it.” He gave up reading the papers for the same reason – he liked being praised but considered it a spiritual infirmity, and it pained him that glory wasn’t given to God. (458)

William Tecumseh Sherman (Union)

Sherman had been sent home insane, but was reinstated. He was assigned some green troops. He took the men on a mission, but they gave up when finding it impossible. This gave the men confidence that Sherman wasn’t actually insane. “They had been down into enemy country, the actual Deep South…, looking for trouble: that gave them the feeling of being veterans… [Sherman] was not nervous; his shoulders did not twitch; he was calm and confident, and when he saw the thing was impossible he did not hesitate to give it up.” (321)

John B. Magruder (Confederacy)

Theater-kid energy from Major General John B. Magruder

If Magruder was high-strung and overimaginative by ordinary standards, it presently developed that these qualities, so doubtful in a military leader, could be positive advantages in an extraordinary situation, such as the one that involved him now. A fifty-two-year-old Virginian, tall and flamboyantly handsome, with a great shock of dark hair, bushy sideburns, and a large but carefully barbered mustache — "Prince John," he had been called in the old army — he spoke with a lisp except when he sang in a clear tenor, as he often did, songs of his own composition. That had been his greatest spare-time pleasure: staging concerts and amateur theatricals, in which he took a leading role, to relieve the tedium of peacetime garrison duty. Now he had a chance to exercise his talents on a larger scale and for a more deadly purpose. Exploiting to the full Lee's admonition to show a brave front to the heavily reinforced enemy, he staged an extravaganza with a cast of thousands, playing as it were to a packed house. He bristled aggressively whenever he imagined a Yankee spyglass trained in his direction, shifting his artillery from point to point along his line and firing noisily at anything in sight. No wheeze was too old for Magruder to employ it. One morning he sent a column along a road that was heavily wooded except for a single gap in plain view of the enemy outposts. All day the gray files swept past in seemingly endless array, an army gathering in thousands among the pines for an offensive. They were no such thing, of course. Like a low-budgeted theatrical director producing the effect with an army of supernumeraries, Magruder was marching a single battalion round and around, past the gap, then around under cover, and past the gap again. (399)

Robert E. Lee (Confederacy)

Lee was known as the “King of Spades” because of how much he made the men dig. (468)

He took desperate chances, and quickly. The opposite of McClellan. (478)

Description from p. 586: “Mars Robert,” big, leonine head, massive shoulders, oversized and muscular hands, narrow hips, feet tiny as a woman’s.

Pugnacious in retreat: After the tide turned against Lee when his plans were found out by the enemy, he showed “a side to his nature that would become more evident down the years. He was not only no less audacious in retreat than in advance, but he was considerably more pugnacious, like an old gray wolf wanting nothing more than half a chance to turn on whoever tried to crowd him as he fell back.” (678)

Lee’s daughter Ann died, afe 23. (781,2)

“We may be annihilated, but we cannot be conquered.” (782)

The War

When did the war start? Traditionally, April 12, 1861. But Union forces first occupied Ft. Sumter on December 26, 1860, so Foote uses that date (see p. 162, where he says “the war was one year old” on 12/26/1861).

The first fatality was from an accidental explosion while saluting the flag after the surrender of Ft. Sumter. The Union commander (Anderson) fired 50 shots in honor of the flag, an ember fell into some gunpower, and the explosion killed Private Daniel Hough and wounded five others. (50)

After surrendering Ft. Sumter, Anderson later headed the Kentucky military. Kentucky stated in the Union. (88)

“In the northern cities, secession sympathizers were bayed by angry crowds until they waved Union banners from their windows.” (51) Reminds me of covid precautions and BLM. Later, radicals threw around the word “treason” for anything they didn’t like (247). Similar to “fascism” or “racism” today.

When Davis fired on Ft. Sumter, it united the North behind Lincoln. But when Lincoln called on the states to supply troops, this united the South behind Davis. A second wave of states seceeded (VA, AR, TN, NC).

Virginians called Richmond “our Rome,” both cities having seven hills. (55)

At the state of the war, the southern population was 9 million, northern 20 million.

Why did people join the army? The reasons were the same in the north and south. Adventure, not to be thought a coward, “it was the thing to do.” (63)

For some, this gives the real reason:

Meanwhile, perhaps no soldier in either army gave a better answer - one more readily understandable to his fellow soldiers, at any rate - than a ragged Virginia private, pounced on by the Northerners in a retreat.

"What are you fighting for anyhow?" his captors asked, looking at him. They were genuinely puzzled, for he obviously owned no slaves and seemingly could have little interest in States Rights or even Independence.

"I'm fighting because you're down here," he said. (65)

The fighting between McCulloch (C) and Lyon (U) near Wilson’s Creek, MO was “more like reciprocal murder” than “panoplied war.”

Col. Edward D. Baker (U) led an attack that retreated off a cliff (105). He became the only sitting U.S. senator ever to be killed in a military engagement. This was at Ball’s Bluff in Virginia (Oct. 21, 1861). His men had to cross a river to reinforce other Union troops, but they didn’t have enough boats to get back across the river when retreating. After Baker was killed, the men panicked and stampeded for the boats, knowing how few there were. They tumbled over the edge of a cliff, often “onto the heads and bayonets of the men below.” (107)

Port Royal, SC (just north of Savannah, Georgia) showed that naval power would be a dominant factor in the war. Steam power made new maneuvers (like DuPont’s expanding ellipse) possible. Ft. Walker at Port Royal had been built to defend against a head-on attack. The moment DuPont conceived of his ellipse, he had basically won. (118 shows a diagram of the ellipse)

The South appointed William Yancey, “the fieriest fire-eater of them all,” to represent the Confederacy to Europe. The South was saying to Europe: “To get cotton you must swallow slavery.” (135)

After the Battle of Belmont, some called Grant a butcher. But “the facts were there for whoever would see them. He had moved instead of waiting for fair weather, had kept his head when things went against him, and had brought his soldiers back to base with some real fighting experience.” (152) He was “the last man to leave the field.” They went to capture their own friends, and the men learned that “if ever they were thought to be so trapped, Grant himself would come to get them out.” (As I write up these notes, I’m reading Bust Hell Wide Open, about Nathan Bedford Forest. There are similarities between him and Grant when it comes to battle, at least based on this description: both move rather than wait, and both lead from the front.)

On April 16, 1862, the Confederacy passed the first national conscription law (the draft) in American history. This was galling to those who were fighting to states’ rights. (394)

When things were going well for the South, they made a peace proposal to the North. If the Union continued the war, it would be their own fault (and that could affect their elections). Since they were winning, it could not be regarded as “suing for peace” (suing = pleading; usually the losing party sues for peace to avoid an unconditional surrender). (665)

But the tide turned because of a small mistake. Top secret southern orders were used to wrap cigars (667-8). And then (670) the cigars were left behind and found by Union soldiers. The whole southern plan was revealed, and McClellan expected to be able to win the war with this information (671).

Future presidents Hayes (#19) and McKinley (#25) both fought at the Battle of South Mountain (Massachusetts, Sept 14, 1862) (677).

In 1862, there were three Confederate incursions into the north, led by Lee (Maryland), Van Dorn and Price (Corinth, MI), and Bragg (Kentucky). (739) Bragg did far better than the others, “yet Lee was praised and he was blamed.” He hadn’t had a showdown with Buell when he had the chance.

On the Federal side, Buell was dismissed (744), replaced by Rosecrans. There were 3 main Union objectives, now assigned to 3 hard-fighting commanders, Burnside, Rosecrans, and Grant. (760-1)

Texas: Farragut (U) attacked Corpus Christi, then attacked and occupied Galveston.

Thomas Jefferson’s grandson, George Randolph, was a Confederate general and (for a while) secretary of war.

Some in the North saw the war as colonizing, siezing, conquering the South. About dominion, northern technological superiority, more than slavery. (800)

The Anaconda Naval Blockade

Winfield Scott proposed the “Anaconda Plan,” a naval blockade of Southern ports. This was widely mocked but very effective.

Confederate privateers, sneaking cotton through the blockade, were considered pirates by Lincoln. When he threatened to treat them as such, hanging those convicted, Davis said he would hang a Union soldier of equivalent rank for each executed privateer. When this came up in 1861, Lincoln was planning to proceed. Davis had men chosen by lot, including a grandson of Paul Revere. Lincoln reconsidered and backed down. This may have appeared weak, but “he saved the lives of Union and Confederate soldiers – Americans both.” (114)

The blockade had one unintended consequence: Britain recognized the Confederacy as its own entity (the “belligerent” in the conflict) rather than simply a part of the Union, since “no nation would blockade its own ports.” (136)

In 1861, two Confederate enjoys boarded a British ship (the Trent), but the United States Navy (under Charles Wilkes) boarded the ship and arrested them, arguably violating British neutrality. This was “The Trent affair,” described like this on p. 138-9:

November 7 they boarded the British mail steamer Trent, which cleared for Southampton that same day. Thus, the blockade having been run without incident, themselves securely quartered on a ship that flew the ensign of the mightiest naval power in the world, the risky leg of the journey was behind them.

So they thought until noon of the following day, when the Trent, steaming through the Bahama Passage, 240 miles out of Havana, sighted an army sloop athwart her course at a point where the channel narrowed to fifteen miles. The Trent broke out her colors and con-rinued on her way; whereupon the sloop ran up the union jack — and put a shot across her bow. After a second shot, which was closer, the Trent stopped engines.

"What do you mean by heaving my vessel to in this way?" the British captain shouted through a trumpet.

For answer the sloop put out two boats, which as they drew nearer were seen to be loaded with sailors, armed marines, and a naval officer who identified himself as he came aboard: Lieutenant D. Mac-Neill Fairfax of the screw sloop San Jacinto, Captain Charles Wilkes, U.S.N., commanding. Having information that Confederate Commissioners James M. Mason and John Slidell were aboard, he demanded the passenger list. At this, Slidell came forward. "I am Mr Slidell. Do you want to see me?" Mason stepped up, too, but no introduction was necessary, he and the lieutenant having met some years ago. (For that matter, Slidell and Captain Wilkes, waiting now aboard the sloop, had been boyhood friends in the old First Ward, back in their New York days, though they had had a falling out before Slidell's departure.) Their identities thus established, together with those of their secretaries, Lieutenant Fairfax informed the British captain, who all this time had scarcely ceased objecting, that he was seizing the four men for return to the United States and trial as traitors. When the captain continued to object — "Pirates! Villains!" some of the passengers were crying; "Throw the damned fellow overboard!" — the lieutenant indicated the San Jacinto, whose guns were bearing on the unarmed Trent. The captain yielded, still protesting; Mason and Slidell and their secretaries were taken over the side.

"Goodbye, my dear," the Louisianian told his wife on parting. "We shall meet in Paris in sixty days."

As a result of the Trent affair, England was thoroughly insulted, and they prepared 8000 soldiers in Canada and threatened war. (157) The solution to this (160) was to wait. Excitement blew over, and cooler heads prevailed.

In 1862, Emporer Napoleon (the Little – not his uncle) received an offer ot 100,000 bales of cotton if France would denounce the naval blockade. He ordered his foreign minister to “ask the English government if it doesn’t think the time has come to recognize the South.” (523)

The Merrimac and The Monitor

The sunk Union ship The Merrimac became the first Confederate iron-clad The Virginia. On her first trial run, she encountered 5 Union blockade ships. Commodore Franklin Buchanana couldn’t resist attacking. Sunk 2, grounded 3.

But the Union had an iron-clad ship, too, The Monitor. Smaller, only 2 guns, but faster and with thicker armor. When The Merrimac came back the next day to finish off the 3 other ships, The Monitor was there. The fight was tactically a draw, but that kept The Merrimac from attacking and saved the other 3 ships.

(A theme I notice: If you are winning, don’t quit and say “I’ll finish this tomorrow.” That never seems to work!)

The Battle of Pea Ridge / Elkhorn Tavern (277-291)

Near Fayetteville, Arkansas, March 7-8, 1862. This battle established Federal control of Missouri and northern Arkansas.

Albert Pike led about 2000 pro-Confederacy Indians. (278) He “dressed in Sioux regalia,” including beaded mocassins. (280)

I like Samuel R. Curtis (U). He shows respect for the dead by reporting their numbers exactly, not in round figures (292). He stood his ground, was humble, and an engineer-poet. Now “the dead friends and foes sleep in the same lonely grave.”

Shiloh (Tennessee, April 6-7, 1862)

“Shiloh” is a Biblical name meaning “the place of peace.” (342)

Johnston took a tin cup as “my share of the spoils” at Shiloh, and from that point on he used the cup instead of a sword to direct the battle. (338) Later, he bled to death after being shot through the femoral artery. A tourniquet might have saved him, but he had sent his staff physician to care for the enemy (Union) wounded! (339-40)

At Shiloh, Sherman pursued Forrest to get him to leave, but Forrest led a surprise charge on Sherman, panicking his men. Forrest’s men quit charging, but he kept on, pulling a Union soldier up onto his horse to use as a human shield when making his escape! (349)

100k soldiers fought, 24% killed, wounded, or captured – same as Waterloo. But Waterloo had settled something. Shiloh didn’t. “After Shiloh, the south never smiled.”

Casualties totaled more than 3 other entire wars combined: Revolutionary + War of 1812 + the Mexican War. (351)

After Shiloh, Grant “gave up all idea of saving the Union except by complete conquest.” (351)

Capture of New Orleans

See Battle of Forts Jackson and St. Philip.

David Dixon Porter (U) planned ot take New Orleans, the biggest Confederate city, bigger than the next 4 largest combined. Taking New Orleans would prove to Europe that the rebels could not “retain what they had claimed by rebellion.” (353)

Porter opened fire on April 18, 1862, Good Friday. (360)

NO’s major general was Lovell (360). He had massive warships, ironclads, The Louisiana and The Mississippi, but neither was completed when Porter attacked. (Yet another example of the importance of striking early, not delaying.)

The Union gun crews spread sand and ash around the guns on their ships, “so that when the fighting grew hot, the gun crews would not slip in their own blood.” (365)

Porter sent over 16,000 shells at Forts Jackston and St. Philip (364) to little effect. Farragut then took the ships up the river to fight it out. The Confederate ships weren’t fully built, or there weren’t enough of them. One that stayed to fight, The Governor Moore, shot through its own deck to make a hole to fire upon a Union ship (Verona), and this worked! But she was quickly destroyed by five other Union ships attacking at once.

F = mv^2

Charles Ellet, Jr., an elderly civil engineer, wrote to the Union War Dept. about how to apply f = mv^2 to naval warfare. Basically, he thought they should build small, fast ships to use as rams. On June 6, 1862, four Union ironclads faced 8 Confederate gunboats. Ellet’s ram boats litterally cut one in half and easily sank it, then caused mayhem and wrecked six others. Only one escaped! This is how the Union regained control of Memphis. (386)

“Perhaps his greatest caution… was shown in the selection of his captains. All were Pennsylvanians, like himself, and all where named Ellet. Seven were [his] brothers and nephews, … and the eighth was his nineteen-year-old son.” (386)

Seven Pines: The Worst-Conducted Conflict in the War

See p. 449. Johnston was wounded. Davis gave Lee command of the Army of Northern Virginia. (451)

Second Bull Run

At the Second Battle of Bull Run, at Brawner’s Farm (Virginia), the Union troops were do green they kept fighting when very outnumbered. “For all they knew, combat was supposed to be like this.” (626)

After Bull Run 2, Louisville, KY was claimed by the Confederacy. Kirby Smith wrote proclamations – we “offer you an opportunity to free yourself” from tyranny. “We come not as conquerors or as despoilers,” but to restore your liberties. (655) Buell receded, so the Confederacy regained northern Alabama, Chattanooga, and much of middle Tennessee. But Bragg handed a path to Louisville to Buell (661) because “he lacked essence.” (660) Bragg’s leadership “was as if a lesser poet set out to imitate Shakespeare or Milton. With luck and skill, he might ape the manner, the superficial arrangement of words and even sentences; but the Shakespearian or Miltonic essence would be missing.”

Lee made a similar proclamation to Maryland (665). Called them to join their “natural position” with the South.

The Battle of Sharpsburg / Antietam

A.P. Hill’s Confederate soldiers put on the Union blue coats so they could get close to the Union soldiers without being fired on, then attacked. Other Union soldiers came to help but didn’t know which group of blue coats to shoot at. (699)

The South calls it the Battle of Sharpsburg (after the city), the North calls it Antietam (after the creek). It was the first army-level engagement of the war on Union soil. (688-701)

The bloodiest day in American history: 12k Union and 11k Conf. fallen, w/ a total of 5000 dead. (702)

Because McClellan repulsed Lee’s invasion into Maryland (though at a very high cost), Lincoln used the occasion of a victory to deliver The Emancipation Proclamation.

Navy

Raphael Semmes, Capt. of the Alabama: “Democracies may do very well for the land, but monarchies, and pretty absolute monarchies at that, are the only successful governments for the sea.” (794) Semmes’s men called him “Old Beeswax” beacuse of his styled mustache. He was a devout Catholic.

“To ease the ache was not to cure the ailment.” (796) When they lost Norfolk, they lost any hope of building a Confederate deep sea Navy.

Quotes

Grant, about Frémont (“The Pathfinder”): “He sat in a room in full uniform with his maps before him. When you went in he would point out one line or another in a mysterious manner, never asking you to take a seat. You left without the least idea of what he meant or what he wanted you to do.” (90)

“An English gentleman was never rude except on purpose.” (136) (So, when Earl Russel replied rudely to Yancey, it was no accident.)

Grant “was something rare in that or any war: a man who could actually learn from experience.” (150)

At Ft. Donelson, Pillow and Floyd escaped, leaving Buckner to surrender to Grant. Grant said Pillow needn’t have worried – “If I had captured him, I would have turned him loose. I would rather have him in command of you fellows than as a prisoner.” (214)

There is nothing to occupy the mind before a battle. “The mind runs on the great uncertainty about to take place, until it is a relief when the battle opens.” (366)

Page 457 refers to “Napoleon’s ‘fifth element,’ mud.” I had to look this up. In Poland, returning from Russia, Napoleon said, “God – besides water, air, earth, and fire – has created a fifth element: mud!”

“They shall fear the stripes if they do not reverence the stars in our banner.” -Butler, after the Union flag was torn down at New Orleans (533)

Halleck to Rosecrans: “I must warn you against this piling up of impediments. Take a lesson from the enemy. Move light.” (769)

“There’s a man in there!”:

This fear of weakness had been the source of their gravest doubt through the opening year of conflict, as well as the subject of the editors' most frequent complaint — Lincoln was lacking in "will and purpose." Now they knew that their fears had been misplaced. A Kentucky visitor, turning to leave the White House, asked the President what cheering news he could take home to friends. By way of reply, Lincoln told him a story about a chess expert who had never met his match until he tried his hand against a machine called the Automaton Chess Player, and was beaten three times running. Astonished, the defeated expert got up from his chair and walked slowly around and around the machine, examining it minutely as he went. At last he stopped and leveled an accusing finger in its direction. "There's a man in there!" he cried. Lincoln paused, then made his point: "Tell my friends there is a man in here." (804)

Miscellany

Judah P. Benjamin became Davis’s Secretary of State, the first Jew to hold a cabinet position in North America.

Albert Sindey Johnston was Davis’s notion of a hero. “He took the blame as he had taken the praise.” (i.e., calmly) (234)

Lincoln tried to purchase all the slaves in the border states in order to emancipate them, but the states declined the offer. (536)

In the naval battle between the Carondolet (U) and the Arkansas (C), one overly curious seamon on the Arkansas stuck his head out to see how things were going and was decapitated (552). Page 550 has the making of the Arkansas under Isaac Newton Brown. He kept 14 forges going around the clock, organized rural blacksmiths to work on the wagonloads of donated and scavanged scrap iron, and had two hundred carpenters working. They pulled it together from basically nothing in about five weeks.

Marylanders’ impression of the rebels: like wolves, they rode like circus riders (with “dash”), incomprehensible dialects, profane, talkative. (663)

Fun/Interesting War Stories

Confederate Col. Stuart mistook a regiment from New York as one from Alabama because they had similar uniforms. He rode up to greet them and didn’t realize his mistake until it was too late to turn back… so he charged! They all panicked, scattered, and he took eleven cannons! (80)

Confederate Henry H. Sibley meant to control the Rio Grande. Starting at El Paso, he moved toward Albuquerque. But the Union leader (Edward R. S. Canby) had the food burned at the Union fort there. As the Confederates conquered forts, the remaining Union soldiers from those forts concentrated at Ft. Union near Las Vegas, NM.

On March 26, 1862, the Union marched out of the fort, so Sibley went out to fight. But it was an ambush – Pike’s Peakers from Denver had formed a militia to repel the Confederate army, and they used the Union army as a decoy. The Confederates lost 146 to only 19 Colorodans.

This was the Battle of Glorieta Pass (300-301). The Texans and Coloradans faced off; neither could retreat. Coloradans circled back to attack the supply train, burned 85 wagons of food, bayoneted 600 horses!

Sibley’s retreat march through the desert was very Blood Meridian. This marked the end of the Civil War for New Mexico and the Far West.

Almost a Nebuchadnezzar story here, but this ends up being a near miss:

The heavy-caliber fire was deliberate and deadly: as Harvey Hill could testify. While his troops were forming under a rain of metal and splintered branches, the North Carolinian sat at a camp table on the exposed side of a large tree, drafting orders for the attack. When one of his officers urged him at least to put the trunk between him and the roaring guns: "Don't worry about me," Hill said. "Look after the men. I am not going to be killed until my time comes." With that, a shell crashed into the earth alongside him, the concussion lifting the predestinarian from his chair and rolling him over and over on the ground. Hill got up, shook the dirt from his coat, the breast of which had been torn by a splinter of iron, and resumed his seat — on the far side of the tree. This and what followed were perhaps the basis for his later statement that, with Confederate infantry and Yankee artillery, he believed he could whip any army in the world. (511)

Both sides picked blackberries together after the Seven Days Battle, June 25-July 1, 1862. (518)

Braxton Bragg (C) was made commander of the Army of the Mississippi. Serving in two positions, he once requested supplies as a lieutenant which he then refused as quartermaster! “Short-tempered and disputatious.” He reports a valuable lesson from Shiloh: When the enemy is in a panic and retreating, press them, and don’t stop for any reason. No time to rally.

John Hunt Morgan (C) took a telegrapher on raids. The telegrapher once sent a message of complaint to Washington about the quality of mules they were capturing from Buell’s army. (570)

A Union major was captured when he “tried to rally a regiment that turned out to be the 2nd Mississippi.” (634)

In Kentucky, under Buell (Union), a guy named Nelson slapped a guy named Davis across the face after an insult. Davis borrowed a gun and shot him. Nelson fell, men came running. Nelson said, “Send for a clergyman; I wish to be baptized.” He died a half hour later. (714)

Union recruits who were new to Buell’s army were called Squirrel Hunters (728).

At Perryville, one of Gilbert’s (U) commanders mistook Polk (C) for a Federal officer. Offering to assist him, the officer was immediately taken prisoner. (736) Later, Polk made this same mistake, but he blustered his way out of it, acting indignant and riding away before anyone could capture him. (737)

Slavery

The war had initially been about “the preservation of the Union.” In 1862, the issue of slavery was added. Emancipation was “a military necessity.” (539)

The Emancipation Proclamation was going to be issued on July 22, 1862, a “military pronouncement.” But Seward convinced Lincoln to wait to make the pronouncement after a victory. He eventually delivered the proclamation after Lee was repulsed at the Battle of Sharpsburg (Antietam).

Issuing the proclamation too early, not after a win, would have made it “inoperative, like the Pope’s bull against the comet.” (This sentence refers to a myth that Pope Callixtus III excommunicated Halley’s Comet in 1456 as “an instrument of the devil.”)

The EP told Confederate states they had 100 days to return to the Union and keep their slaves. (707) It prevented Europe from recognizing the Confederacy, since they would not want to be on the pro-slavery side of the conflict. (709)

Ending

The book ends with Lincoln’s speech to Congress, December 1862. He presses them to approve his plan for “compensated emancipation,” i.e., to pay masters for their emancipated slaves in the Union states that still had slavery. (810)

Foote spent 5 years writing this book. Page 814 has a good list of biographies.

He thanks his friends for not mentioning the Civil War when seeing him socially! (815)

He acknowledges he is a Southerner but attempts to write without bias.

Vocab

• abatis - a defensive obstacle made of felled trees, piled up with branches sharpened toward the enemy
• affluent - tributary (471)
• beau sabreur - a handsome swordsman, dashing adventurer
• boatswain - pronounced “bo-zen”, a ship officer supervising the deck, aka “deck boss”
• Cannae - a bad defeat; Cannae was the worst defeat in Roman history. In 216 BC, Hannibal led Carthage against the village of Cannae, where a smaller force defeated the larger. (650)
• coign - the keystone of an arch (90)
• corduroy - a road made of logs laid down crosswise
• élan - zeal (163)
• gaunted - southern word for thin, emaciated (140)
• gobble-talk - French, according to the southern soldiers (428)
• jogtrot - slow, steady, redundant, humdrum. “Lincoln’s jogtrot prose.” (804)
• littoral - sea shore (113)
• milksick - death or sickness after drinking milk from a cow that had eaten a poisonous root (21)
• Mississippi means “the Father of Waters” (145)
• pleurisy - inflamation of the lungs (227)
• redan - a defensive fortification in the shape of a V
• seriatim - one after another (258: “She [The Virginia] will destroy, seriatim, every naval vessel…”)
• Simon pure - real, authentic. From a character in a 1717 play who was impersonated and had to prove his identity.
• sine die - Latin for “without a day.” Adjourning a meeting sine die means adjourning indefinitely, without setting a day for the next meeting. (46)
• splice the main brace - British Navy term meaning to serve grog to the men after a big exertion
• the elephant - veterans called combat “the elephant” and told recruits “the time had come to meet the elephant” (330)
• topgallant forecastle - these nautical terms have crazy pronunciations. This is pronounced t’gallant foke-sul. The forecastle is the upper deck at the bow, and the topgallant forecastle is a smaller extra deck above that. (368)
• torpedos - contact mines. “Anchored to the river-bottom by cables that held them upright underwater, they were equipped with pronged rod extending upward to just below the surface, read to trip the detonators on contact.” (186) Thus, Farragut commanding “damn the torpedoes” at the Battle of Mobile Bay in 1864.
• traduce - malign (747)
• volte-face (“volt foss”) - reversal, about-face
• whistling in the dark - speculating (796)
• Zooaves (zoo-ahvs) - soldiers in colorful uniforms inspired by the French foreign legion. (80)