PRELIMINARY CONCLUSIONS ABOUT THE CIVIL WAR

Well, I’m continuing to bone up on the Civil War preparatory to writing “Attorney-Generals.” I’ve read approximately 2,000 pages, including Bruce Catton’s Civil War, half of Shelby Foote’s trilogy, Civil War, A Narrative, and several monographs, including James McPherson’s Battle Cry of Freedom  and Clement Anselm Evans’s Outline of Confederate Military History. I’m determined to finish the 1,500 pages left to read in Foote’s trilogy, and then I’ll decide what else must be read before re-embarking on my writing project.

Based on my reading I’ve drawn some very tentative preliminary conclusions, which are subject to change upon the assimilation of further information. My tentative conclusions are as follows:

(1) States’ rights were robust in the antebellum  United States. The governors of the various states were as powerful as Chinese Warlords, and many of them exercised their power to frustrate the efforts of both Jefferson Davis and Abraham Lincoln during the early stages of the war.

(2) Slavery, although it was destined for extinction, was in no immediate danger of being abolished at the outset of the war, and it would probably have survived for the foreseeable future had the war ended in 1861 or 1862.

(3) Absent grievous blunders by the North, the South wasn’t going to win the war unless it (a) strictly curtailed states’ rights, and (b) abolished slavery. Strict curtailment of states’ rights would have made the Confederate war effort 1000% more efficient. Enlistment of slaves into the Confederate Army with the promise of emancipation would have gone far to remedy the severe disparity in manpower between North and South, and would have eliminated the major stumbling block to formal recognition of the Confederacy by England and France. At least two Confederate generals urged the emancipation of slaves who agreed to serve in the Confederate Army—Patrick R. Cleburne, The “Stonewall of the West,” and Robert E. Lee.

(4) Ironically, the South declared its independence to preserve the two things which it had to surrender in order to gain its independence.

(5) Absent grievous blunders by the South, the North wasn’t going to win the war until it (a) strictly curtailed states’ rights, and (b) abolished slavery.

(6) The North won because it (a) strictly curtailed states’ rights, thereby greatly diminishing the individual states’ ability to undermine the war effort, and (b) abolished slavery, thereby forever blocking official recognition of the Confederacy by the European powers.

(7) The North committed enough blunders for the South to win without strictly curtailing states’ rights or abolishing slavery, but the South blundered away its opportunities to capitalize on those blunders.

(8) The South committed enough blunders for the North to win without strictly curtailing states’ rights or abolishing slavery, but the North blundered away its opportunities to capitalize on those blunders.

(9) The most momentous military decision of the war was made by Robert E. Lee when he declined Winfield Scott’s offer to command the Federal forces in the Civil War. Had he accepted the command, his tactical brilliance would have brought the war to a much speedier conclusion with a greatly reduced loss of life. Who can doubt that the First Battle of Bull Run would have been a Union victory had Lee commanded the Federal forces? Who can doubt that the Peninsula Campaign would have resulted in the capture of Richmond if Lee had been at the head of the Army of the Potomac?

(10) The Army of Northern Virginia had the best fighters in the war, but the Army of the Potomac had the best soldiers. Major-General J.F.C. Fuller summed up the Confederate soldier quite well when he wrote “Except for his lack of discipline, the Confederate soldier was probably the finest individual fighter the world has ever seen…. In battle the Confederate fought like a Berserker: out of battle he ceased to be a soldier.” Grant and Lee: A Study in Personality and Generalship, pp. 52, 56. As for the Federal soldiers of the Army of the Potomac, has any army ever endured such a lengthy string of ignominious defeats as did the Army of the Potomac without completely disintegrating? With their iron discipline and resolute determination to endure all hardship, the soldiers of the Army of the Potomac could have marched to victory after victory had they not been saddled with such a procession of mediocre generals.