History Assignment

SIX

The Civil War, 1861–1862

At 4:30 A.M. on April 12, 1861, a lightning-like flash and thunderous roar shattered the predawn stillness at Charleston, South Carolina. A mortar shell arced across the sky, its burning fuse etching a parabolic path toward Fort Sumter. Moments after the shell exploded, guns ringing the harbor began battering the fort as if “an army of devils were swooping around it.” For thirty-four hours artillery commanded by General Pierre Gustave Toutant Beauregard fired at Sumter, setting numerous fires and knocking huge masonry flakes in all directions. Miraculously, the seemingly murderous barrage killed none of the fort’s soldiers or workmen. But the commanding officer, Major Robert Anderson, who had been Beauregard’s artillery instructor at West Point, knew the good luck could not continue. Having satisfied the demands of duty and honor, he ordered the Stars and Stripes lowered and the white flag raised. The Civil War had begun.

Decades of sectional disagreements over the expansion of slavery into the territories and, for a small minority of northerners, the moral implications of the institution, fueled sharp differences over states’ rights versus national authority and propelled the divided nation toward that fateful moment in Charleston Harbor. Once war became a reality, many people on both sides offered predictions regarding its probable duration and who would triumph. Few, however, foresaw exactly what the war would be like. Most people optimistically predicted a brief conflict waged with the romantic heroism of a Sir Walter Scott novel. Instead, the outlines of modern total warfare emerged during a four-year ordeal. Since both sides fought for unlimited objectives—the North for reunion and (eventually) emancipation, the South for independence and slavery’s

preservation—a compromise solution was impossible. No short, restrained war would convince either side to yield; only a prolonged and brutal struggle would resolve the issue.

As the North and South pursued their objectives, sheer numbers of men and industrial capacity became extremely significant. One Confederate general wrote that the war became one “in which the whole population and whole production of a country (the soldiers and the subsistence of armies) are to be put on a war footing, where every institution is to be made auxiliary to war, where every citizen and every industry is to have for the time but the one attribute—that of contributing to the public defense.” Neither belligerent could depend upon improvised measures to equip, feed, and transport its huge armies. Men with administrative skills working behind the lines were equal in importance to men at the front. Furthermore, the coordination of logistical and strategic matters on a vast scale could not be left to individual states. Massive mobilization required an unprecedented degree of centralized national control over military policy.

Mobilizing for War

The North’s warmaking resources were much greater than the Confederacy’s. Roughly speaking, in 1861 the Union could draw upon a white population of 20 million, the South upon 6 million. Two other demographic factors influenced the numerical balance. First, the South contained nearly 4 million slaves who were initially a military asset, laboring in fields and factories and thereby releasing a high percentage of white males for military service. However, after 1862–1863, when the North began enlisting black troops, the slaves progressively became a northern asset. Second, between 1861 and 1865 more than 800,000 immigrants arrived in the North, including a high proportion of males liable for military service. Approximately 20 to 25 percent of the Union Army’s men were foreign-born. Ultimately more than 2 million men served in the Union Army, which reached its peak strength of about 1 million late in the war. Perhaps 750,000 men fought in the Confederate Army, which had a maximum strength of 464,500 in late 1863.11 This nearly total mobilization of southern white males created a dilemma:

Fattening the thin gray ranks limited the number of workers in agriculture, mines, foundries, and supply bureaus, risking such reduced output that the soldiers could not be fed and supplied.

The Confederacy did not have the financial structure to wage a long war. It had few banking experts and institutions, had very little specie at its disposal, and had its wealth invested primarily in land and slaves, which were hard to convert into liquid capital. For income the South traditionally sold cotton to the North and to Europe, but the war interrupted this trade. These financial weaknesses undermined the South’s ability to pay for the war by fiscally responsible means. Taxation produced less than 5 percent of the Confederacy’s income. The Confederate constitution prohibited protective tariffs, and although the congress enacted a variety of tax measures, they produced little revenue. The South also tried to borrow money at home and abroad, but few southerners had money to invest, and foreigners had doubts about the new nation’s survival. In all, bonds produced less than 33 percent of government income. By necessity rather than choice, Secretary of the Treasury Christopher Memminger turned to the printing press, churning out more than $1.5 billion in paper money, which represented approximately two- thirds of Confederate wartime revenue. As in the Revolution, overabundant paper money combined with severe commodity shortages to create rampant inflation.

Compared to the South, inflation was not so severe in the North, which also financed the war through taxation, loans, and paper money. However, drawing upon its superior fiscal strength, the Union relied primarily upon taxes and borrowing, the former yielding approximately 21 percent of government income, the latter 63 percent. Beginning in 1862 Congress also authorized the Treasury Department to print paper money, called “greenbacks.” During the war it issued $450 million in greenbacks, but this represented only one-sixth of government expenditures.

The North’s industrial superiority was also impressive. In 1860 the northern states had 110,000 manufacturing establishments, while the southern states had only 18,000. The total value of manufactured goods in Virginia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi was less than $85 million, but New York’s alone was almost $380 million. However, these numbers do not completely reveal the South’s industrial weakness. Southern states

relied on northern technological know-how and skilled labor, and many skilled laborers went back north. The Confederacy’s raw-materials base could not support needed industrial expansion. For instance, during the year ending June 1, 1860, the states forming the Confederacy produced 36,790 tons of pig iron, while the figure for Pennsylvania alone was 580,049 tons. Furthermore, Confederate mines and factories, clustered in the upper south and in coastal cities, were vulnerable to enemy assault.

Railroads were the indispensable element in Civil War transportation, but the South contained only 9,000 of the 30,000 miles of track in 1860. Again, these figures do not fully expose the disparity. Most southern lines were short and single track. The numerous and competitive railroad companies used different track gauges, and when rival lines entered a city, they invariably remained unconnected. Gaps existed in seemingly continuous lines, tracks and bridges were often poorly constructed, and repair facilities were negligible. Locomotives, rolling stock, and rails were scarce, and the South could not produce them during the war. The government’s reluctance to supervise the railroads compounded all these problems. In May 1863 the Confederate congress granted the government broad authority over the railroads, but President Jefferson Davis hesitated to wield the power. Not until early 1865, far too late, did the Confederacy finally take control of the railroads.

The South did not have a railroad network that tied its scant industrial base together or readily permitted long-distance strategic movements. Only one genuine trunk line, running from Memphis through Corinth, Chattanooga, and Lynchburg to Richmond, linked the Mississippi Valley with Virginia. A second trunk line from Vicksburg to Atlanta, where it branched to Wilmington, Charleston, and Savannah, remained unfinished. Four lateral lines crossed those two “main” railroads. One ran from Memphis to Jackson to New Orleans; another stretched from Columbus, Kentucky, through Corinth to Mobile; a third connected Louisville, Nashville, Chattanooga, and Atlanta; the fourth hopscotched along the seaboard from Savannah to Charleston to Wilmington, then ran north to Petersburg and Richmond. Should the North sever any of these fragile arteries, the result would be disastrous.

Northern railroads formed a much better network and suffered less than their southern counterparts from different gauges, poor terminal

facilities, gaps, shoddy workmanship, and shortages. The North’s industrial facilities allowed it to produce ample rolling stock and rails. Equally important, President Abraham Lincoln did not share Davis’s sensitivity about government interference with railroads. In January 1862 Congress authorized Lincoln to take possession of any railroads whenever public safety warranted it and place them under military control. The next month Lincoln appointed Daniel C. McCallum director of the United States Military Railroads, and in May the president took formal possession of all railroads. However, he intimated that provided a company sustained the war effort, he would not actually seize the railroad and direct its internal affairs. The president also saw to it that cooperative lines received government aid. He secured such a high degree of cooperation that McCallum’s organization, with but a few exceptions, operated only railroads captured or built in Confederate territory.

Northern water and wagon transportation was also better. Yankee sea power restricted Confederate coastal traffic, and Union gunboats soon

plied most of the great western rivers. The South had few barges and steamboats and could not build very many; the North’s situation was the opposite. While railroads and steamboats were vitally important, armies straying from the railhead and wharf depended upon horse- and mule- drawn wagons. When Confederate wagons fell into disrepair, shortages of iron tires and leather goods delayed or prevented repair or replacement. When Union wagons broke down, quartermasters simply requisitioned new ones.

Divisiveness within southern society exacerbated its manpower and resource problems. Southern Unionists were especially numerous in the Appalachian highlands, where, vowed a Knoxville newspaper editor, they would “fight secession leaders till Hell froze over, and then fight them on the ice.” This was no idle boast. Viewing the mountain Unionists as a traitorous wedge thrusting into the Confederacy’s heartland, the South conducted military operations into the region but could not eradicate the loyalists. Two mounted regiments escaped from North Carolina to fight for the Union, thousands of east Tennesseans joined bluecoated units, and northern Alabama Unionists formed the Federal 1st Alabama Cavalry. In all, more than 100,000 southern Unionists fought for the North, with every Confederate state except South Carolina providing at least a battalion of white soldiers for the Union Army. Given the South’s limited manpower and the North’s seemingly insatiable need for soldiers, this “missing” southern army that turned up in the enemy’s ranks was a crucial element in the ultimate Confederate defeat.

States’ rights enthusiasts also disrupted southern harmony. The Confederate constitution guaranteed state sovereignty. Unwilling to surrender much state power, prominent politicians such as Vice President Alexander H. Stephens and Governors Joseph E. Brown of Georgia and Zebulon B. Vance of North Carolina resisted the centralization of authority necessary for efficient warmaking.

Although facing long odds, the Confederate cause was far from hopeless. Many imponderables made northern advantages less imposing than they seemed. One of the greatest uncertainties was the fate of four border slave states that had not seceded. Delaware’s resources were minimal, but Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri contained 2.5 million whites and extensive agriculture and industrial resources. Should these

states join the Confederacy, the manpower and resources imbalance would be partially addressed. Another unknown was the war’s duration. The North required considerable time to convert its warmaking potential into actual military power. A short war would render the North’s manpower and industrial superiority superfluous. Foreign intervention was also possible; the South expected English and perhaps French assistance. Because it supplied four-fifths of the cotton used in European mills, the South felt confident that the English and French economies would falter without its raw material. When war began, the Confederacy, by popular consensus rather than government decree, imposed a cotton embargo, anticipating European recognition and aid in return for renewed cotton shipments.

High-level leadership could also make a difference, and a comparison of the commanders in chief seemingly favored the South. An 1828 West Point graduate, Jefferson Davis performed gallant Mexican War service and served in both houses of Congress before becoming President Franklin Pierce’s secretary of war, a position he administered with considerable skill. Lincoln served four terms in the Illinois legislature and one term in the House of Representatives and was best remembered for his humorous yarns and great strength. He was ignorant of the theory and history of war, and his own military experience was a fifty-day militia stint during the Black Hawk War, when, he said only half-jokingly, he led charges against wild onion beds and lost blood battling mosquitoes. By training and experience Davis seemed ideally qualified to lead a nation at war; Lincoln appeared equally unqualified.

And, finally, what of morale? Statistics and accounting ledgers do not win wars, but courage and tenacity at home and at the front are often decisive. The South’s determination seemed more certain than the North’s. Men on both sides viewed the situation through the past’s prism, and history apparently favored the Confederacy. Southerners considered themselves akin to their Revolutionary forefathers, fighting for lofty principles against a tyrannical government and in defense of home and hearth. On the other hand, cast in the conqueror’s role, the North had a task similar to Britain’s during the Revolution. How long would northerners sustain a war to force southern states back into a Union they hated, especially if the cost in blood and treasure became high? From the

first some northerners, especially Peace Democrats, urged the Lincoln administration to let the South go.

The widespread sentiment that southerners were more militarily inclined than Yankees reinforced the South’s sense of invincibility. Whether Confederates were more militant is debatable, but large numbers of people on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line thought they were. Many antebellum Americans believed that northeastern commercialism sapped manly virtues, while plantation life accustomed young men to live outdoors, to ride and shoot, and to enjoy violence. Thus in the eastern theater where Union armies came from the northeast, southerners may have had a psychological edge. When a Confederate boasted that he could whip ten Yankees, many Yankees believed him.

War Aims and Strategies

As telegraph lines spread the news of Fort Sumter across the sundered nation, the Lincoln and Davis administrations pondered their strategic options. Strategy flows from an amalgam of factors. National policy is of primary importance, but strategists must also consider geography, local political pressure, military theory and training, resources and logistics, foreign opinion, and enemy intentions. The North’s initial policy objective was to reunite the Union by conquest and subjugation if necessary, which required offensive operations and complete military victory. For the South, which only needed to defend itself, a stalemated war that eroded northern determination and brought foreign assistance would suffice. Thus the strategic equation was simply stated: Could the North conquer the Confederacy before the South convinced the northern populace and the British government that it was unconquerable?

As the combatants surveyed the battleline, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean to the Kansas prairies and more than 3,500 miles along the coast, four main theaters were evident. Compressed between Chesapeake Bay and the Appalachians, the eastern theater consisted of two subtheaters: The Shenandoah Valley, and the remainder of Virginia east of the mountains. The Shenandoah was a bountiful southern granary and an excellent invasion route into the North, allowing Confederate forces to threaten Washington and other cities, as well as two vital northern

transportation systems, the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal. By contrast, the Valley was a strategic dead end for northern forces, channeling them deeper into the mountains. In eastern Virginia, four large rivers (the James, York, Rappahannock, and Potomac) and several lesser streams flowed west to east, dividing the region between Washington and Richmond. These waterways made superb defensive positions against an army coming overland but provided penetration routes deep into the interior if northern invaders came by sea. Thus while each combatant had inviting possibilities for conducting end runs around the enemy’s right flank, a direct approach toward Richmond or Washington would involve desperate fighting. With both capitals located in the eastern theater, events there exerted an especially strong pull on national emotions and strategy.

Lying between the Appalachians and the Mississippi River, the expansive western theater also had two subtheaters: Middle and east Tennessee, and the Mississippi River line. Here geography favored the Union, since no natural barriers—unless Kentucky seceded—barred an advance. The Cumberland, Tennessee, and Mississippi Rivers ran north and south, puncturing any defensive line. The third theater was the trans- Mississippi region, equally vast but not as important, and events in the eastern and western theaters determined its fate. The last theater was the sea, controlled by the North. What happened on the oceans and along the Confederate seaboard greatly influenced the war in the two critical land theaters.

Union strategy evolved gradually, ultimately combining a strategy of exhaustion with one of annihilation. In the broadest terms, the North’s high command emphasized an exhaustion strategy in the western theater, where the rivers provided penetration routes into the South’s most important resource areas, and emphasized annihilation in the constricted eastern theater, where Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia blocked any southward advance. The strategies interacted in a cycle that, for the South, was vicious. West of the Appalachians the Union exhausted the South’s warmaking capacity by conquering territory, crippling its railroad system, and capturing cities possessing logistical and political significance. The North thereby deprived Confederate armies of logistical resources and cut them off from their manpower pool, while sapping the southern

populace’s will to continue resistance. In the process the North also practically annihilated the enemy’s main field armies both in the west and in Virginia. As the Union battered the weakening gray armies in battle and Confederate morale cracked, the South was less able to defend its remaining resources and communications networks. By late 1864 the South’s capacity for defense had been so reduced that the Union could send massive raids into the enemy’s shrinking domain with virtual impunity.

Commanding General Winfield Scott made the first coherent strategic proposal, the so-called Anaconda Plan, named after the South American snake that slowly crushes its victims. Scott’s plan was essentially a strategy of exhaustion. He wanted to impose a naval blockade to seal the Confederacy off from Europe and thrust down the Mississippi to isolate the trans-Mississippi west. The eastern half of the Confederacy would become a peninsula surrounded on three sides by Yankee naval power and bottled up on the landward side by massive armies. Having grasped the victim in the reptile’s constricting coil, the North would wait for suffocation to begin, allowing southern Unionists to reassert control and bring the seceded states back into the Union. In focusing attention on the blockade and the Mississippi, Scott highlighted two essential elements of northern strategy. However, his plan contained a fundamental weakness: The anaconda dealt death slowly, and the public and prominent politicians wanted a rattlesnake-quick strike at Richmond.

Many generals also wanted more decisive action than what Scott proposed, and they spoke of ending the rebellion by destroying enemy armies in great battles. Lincoln realized that Confederate armies were vital Union objectives, urging his generals to “destroy the rebel army if possible” and expressing disappointment when they failed to do so. However, tactical problems made annihilation of an army in a single battle virtually impossible. As Union armies marched south, their numerical superiority dissipated as commanders had to detach troops for garrison duty and to guard ever-lengthening supply lines. Although generally outnumbering the South, the North rarely had overwhelming numerical superiority on the battlefield. And if Confederates assumed the tactical defensive, they could fight on more than equal terms, since the rifle made one entrenched defender worth several attackers. Ideally northern

generals should combine a strategic offensive with the tactical defensive, but this prescription was easier stated than filled.

Even if the Union mauled a Confederate army, pursuit of the beaten foe was difficult. The retreating army moved through friendly country and along its lines of communications, destroying the railroads and bridges, denuding the region of supplies, and leaving rear guards to hinder the pursuer. Aside from having to reorganize after sustaining heavy casualties, the victorious army had to rebuild the communications lines, bring supplies forward, and frequently pause to deploy against the enemy rear guards. Even an army that was grievously hurt in battle usually managed to escape, rebuild, and fight again. An army could eventually be destroyed, but only through the cumulative effects of logistical deprivation and attrition in numerous battles.

To Scott’s concepts regarding the blockade and the Mississippi and to the desire for war-ending climactic battles, Lincoln added an astute perception. He realized the Confederacy would be hard pressed to resist constant, simultaneous advances, which the North’s greater manpower and material made possible. As he wrote to General Don Carlos Buell, the North must menace the enemy “with superior forces at different points, at the same time; so that we can safely attack one, or both, if he makes no change; and if he weakens one to strengthen the other, forbear to attack the strengthened one, but seize and hold the weakened one, gaining so much.” However, the concept of simultaneous advances had two impediments, one conceptual and the other geographic. The president’s strategic insight ran counter to the prevailing military principles of concentration and mass, which demanded only one offensive at a time. For example, in the winter of 1861–1862 the Army of the Potomac’s commander developed a plan that called for a single army of 273,000 men and 600 artillery pieces to operate as a juggernaut that would flatten the South in one campaign. Any other operations would be decidedly secondary, designed solely to support this massive force. The geographic constraint was that although rivers were relatively secure routes of invasion, once the North reached the source of the Cumberland and Tennessee and controlled the Mississippi, it would have to depend on railroads, which were fragile; wherever they supported Union penetrations, Confederate cavalry units and guerrilla bands raided the

vulnerable tracks and bridges, creating nearly insuperable logistical problems.

Late in the war Ulysses S. Grant added one last element to Union strategy: Sending army-sized raids to devastate the rebels’ remaining logistical base. The raiding strategy not only eliminated the necessity to garrison more territory and to protect supply lines, but it also meant Union forces could avoid costly battles against Confederate armies deployed on the tactical defensive. The raiding force departed one point in occupied territory, moved rapidly through a region living primarily off the land, destroyed everything of military value in its path, and emerged at a different locale. Grant’s foremost subordinate, William T. Sherman, perceived that these raids also had a psychological impact, undermining the South’s morale by demonstrating its incapacity for effective defense. By 1865 the Union had virtually ceased trying to capture more Southern territory and instead relied almost exclusively on raids against enemy logistics.

Four key tasks dominated northern strategy after the war’s first year. Control of the Mississippi would deprive the Confederacy of valuable supplies, such as Texas beef and grain. An offensive through middle and east Tennessee and then along the Chattanooga-Atlanta axis would liberate loyal east Tennesseans, deny the rebels access to Tennessee’s resources, cut the South’s best east-west railroad, and make possible a further movement toward Mobile or Savannah, slicing the Confederacy again and further disrupting its communications routes. Incessant military activity in Virginia would destroy Lee’s army and, secondarily, capture the enemy capital. Finally, as land forces opened the Mississippi, cracked the Appalachian barrier, ravaged southern logistics, and hammered Lee’s army, the Union Navy would tighten the blockade and support amphibious coastal assaults.

With limited resources to protect an enormous country, how could the Confederacy forestall a northern victory? In trying to answer this question, Confederate strategists wrestled with two fundamental problems. One was a matter of priorities. With enemy pressure in several places at once, which area was most crucial for survival, the eastern or western theater—and within the broad spaces of the latter, the Mississippi line or Tennessee? Since both theaters had prominent advocates,

especially Lee for the eastern and Beauregard for the western, the Davis administration vacillated instead of making hard choices. The other question was whether the South should invade the North or stand behind its borders fending off Union assaults. Lee was the foremost proponent of an offensive defensive, arguing that winning battles on northern soil would hasten enemy demoralization and European intervention, allow hungry southern armies to feast on northern crops, and bolster home- front morale. A passive defensive policy would yield the initiative by giving the Union time to mobilize and the choice of when and where to fight. Others disagreed. Invasion might rally the northern population to the war effort and weaken the South’s appeal to world opinion by making the Confederacy seem the aggressor. Tenacious defense better served Confederate purposes, particularly considering the advantage firepower conferred on the defense. Buffeted by conflicting advice, Davis advocated defending southern boundaries, but on three occasions he sanctioned invasions.

For defense Davis adopted the traditional American system of geographic departmental commands. The system, which the president hoped would reconcile the needs for both local and national defense, meshed with Confederate political and logistical realities. Every Confederate state felt threatened, since each one faced potential invasion from either the land or sea. States’ rights oratory aside, all the southern states wanted the central government to bear the major defense burden. Wide distribution of Confederate forces placated state and local politicians. Since the South’s transportation network made the centralization of logistical resources difficult, Davis’s system required each department to protect the resources of its geographic area, and it gave the department a virtual monopoly on that region’s raw materials, munitions, factory production, and food.

The departmental system also permitted strategic flexibility, since boundaries could be redrawn as the logistical and strategic situation changed. In 1861, for example, when military intelligence regarding the strength and objectives of Union forces was often inaccurate, Davis created a patchwork of small departments. However, as the strategic picture clarified in 1862–1863, Davis consolidated the departments into four major regional commands: the trans-Mississippi; the Department of

the West, embracing the Mississippi and Tennessee subtheaters; the Department of South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida; and Lee’s command in Virginia and North Carolina. No matter what the departmental boundaries were, the Confederate high command could conduct an active defense through interdepartmental troop concentrations, either to exploit strategic opportunities or to parry enemy thrusts. To facilitate these periodic concentrations, the government maintained a railroad pipeline at least partially filled with reserves. The pipeline concept involved sending troops from garrisons nearest the point of concentration and replacing them with units from more distant garrisons.

Although essentially sound, Davis’s departmental system and the strategy of dispersed forces capable of concentration contained flaws. One problem was that Davis granted departmental commanders considerable autonomy on the assumption that they best understood the local situation. Having drawn the boundaries, selected the commanders, and granted discretion, Davis usually refused to order interdepartmental cooperation, relying instead on requests and friendly collaboration. All too often, however, departmental commanders became possessive of their men and resources and, without positive orders, refused to cooperate. Sometimes department boundaries were inappropriate. As one example, the belief that the Mississippi marked a natural division between departments ensnared the Confederacy’s river defense in command squabbles. Finally, the South had to preserve its rail lines to maintain the ability to deploy reserves between departments rapidly.

Even as the belligerent governments grappled with strategic problems, troops were mobilizing. On March 6, 1861, the Confederate Provisional Congress authorized Davis to call out the militia for six months and to accept 100,000 twelve-month volunteers. Between March 9 and April 16 Davis called for 60,200 volunteers. Responding to Fort Sumter, the Confederate congress passed several laws authorizing more volunteers, some for “any length of time” the president prescribed and others for the war’s duration. Under these various measures six-month, one-year, and long-term recruits entered Confederate service. Meanwhile, on April 15 Lincoln called for 75,000 three-month militia, basing his proclamation on the Militia Act of 1792. Throughout the North most states responded with alacrity to the quotas assigned by the War Department and

overrecruited. The government accepted 91,816 men, but governors clamored for the War Department to take still more troops. Acting without legal authority, Lincoln increased the regular Army by 22,714 men and the Navy by 18,000 and called for 42,034 three-year volunteers. Again more men responded than the government called for, and governors urged the administration to increase their troop quotas. When Congress convened on July 4, the president asked sanction for his extralegal action and for authority to raise at least another 400,000 three- year volunteers. Congress assented to both requests, even raising the president’s figure to 500,000 men.

Early northern and southern manpower mobilization was similar in four respects. First, both sides relied on newly raised volunteer armies rather than existing military institutions. The northern regular Army, which remained a distinct organization from the volunteers, expanded very little during the war. The Confederacy established a regular army that attained an authorized strength of 15,000, but few men ever enlisted in it. Most northern states refurbished their militias, which served as internal security forces, garrisoned forts and prisoner-of-war camps, guarded communications lines and industries, and patrolled the Canadian and Indian frontiers. During invasion scares states mobilized thousands of militiamen. But the militia’s primary role was, as the Indiana adjutant general admitted, to serve “as the nursery from which the old regiments and batteries of volunteers were to be recruited and new ones organized.” Southern militias performed similar functions in some states. However, they also played a harmful role that had no northern equivalent: States’ rights governors utilized their state forces to challenge Richmond’s centralized authority, hindering efficient manpower mobilization.

Second, prewar volunteer militia units supplied many recruits, giving each side a core of partially trained and equipped men. Third, the states, not the national governments, controlled mobilization, exhibiting far more vigor than the overburdened, understaffed war departments. State authorities and, in some cases, glory-seeking individuals enlisted the men, formed the regiments, and sent them off to war. Finally, more troops rallied to the colors faster than the governments (state or national) could provide for them. As one Indiana volunteer remembered, all his “regiment lacked of being a good fighting machine was guns, ammunition,

cartridge boxes, canteens, haversacks, knapsacks, blankets, etc., with a proper knowledge of how all these equipments could be used with effect.”

Amid massive administrative confusion, with both sides trying to organize and provision hectically raised troops, the war’s first skirmishes occurred. The South’s victory at Fort Sumter was largely symbolic, but within a few days it gained two more substantive successes; and to the worried Lincoln administration Confederate forces appeared close to an even greater achievement, the capture of Washington. Confronted by Virginia militiamen on April 18, the small Union garrison guarding Harpers Ferry abandoned the arsenal. The Yankees left it ablaze, but southerners salvaged much priceless equipment before they withdrew farther up the Shenandoah to Winchester. Three days later Virginia militiamen occupied the Norfolk Navy Yard, gaining intact the nation’s largest naval base, with hundreds of modern artillery pieces, construction and repair facilities, and several ships under repair, including the Merrimack, which burned to the waterline during the Yankee evacuation. Teeming with Confederate sympathizers and situated between slave states, Washington was practically defenseless. Fearing an enemy coup d’état, Lincoln waited with mounting anxiety for militia to arrive. Fortunately, less than forty-eight hours after receiving his call, Massachusetts Governor John Andrew had four regiments commanded by Benjamin F. Butler heading for Washington. No state had a better volunteer militia, and on April 19 the 6th Massachusetts Regiment arrived. Other units quickly followed, and on May 24 troops undertook the North’s first southward advance. Crossing the Potomac, they occupied Alexandria and Arlington Heights.

The Union had not only saved the capital but gained western Virginia. In late May General George B. McClellan, commanding the Department of the Ohio, ordered a force to aid the area’s Unionists and protect the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. In a six-week campaign, McClellan’s men maneuvered the Confederates out of western Virginia. McClellan’s reputation soared, and with Federal guns inspiring confidence, the loyal mountaineers eventually formed a separate state (West Virginia), which entered the Union in 1863. Three months of war produced no big battles, and neither side gained an appreciable advantage. The preservation of

Washington and the occupation of western Virginia counterbalanced the South’s successes at Fort Sumter, Harpers Ferry, and Norfolk. However, within a three-week midsummer span the Confederacy won two stunning victories, one on the banks of a meandering Virginia stream, the other 800 miles to the west along a Missouri creek. Yet in 1861 the South would lose the most important struggle, the struggle for the border states.

Early Battles

General Irvin McDowell, a husky man with a prodigious appetite, was not yet hungry for a battle. He had never commanded so much as a regiment in action, yet he now led 35,000 officers and men stationed at Alexandria. Organizing the mixture of militia, three-year volunteers, and a few regulars took time, and like most professional soldiers, McDowell believed troops should be thoroughly trained and disciplined. The general did not want to fight, but he could not avoid it. Sentiment increased daily for an offensive, and Lincoln felt the pressure. The ninety-day militia enlistments expired soon, a demonstration of northern vigor would discourage European intervention, and northern morale needed a boost. Although General Scott supported his subordinate in counseling delay, general impatience overrode the generals’ prudence. The president ordered McDowell to advance, resulting in the First Battle of Bull Run (or First Manassas) on July 21.

McDowell’s objective was Richmond, but first he had to get through Manassas Junction, where Beauregard had 22,000 Confederates posted behind Bull Run. The southerners had several advantages. First, the rebel general learned when Lincoln had ordered McDowell to move forward. Thus alerted, Beauregard received reinforcements from Joseph E. Johnston’s Army of Shenandoah, which was able to elude a larger Union army commanded by Robert Patterson and withdraw from the valley via the Manassas Gap Railroad. This was the first time railroads played an important role in a strategic maneuver. Although the Confederates were as untrained as their opponents, they fought on the defensive. Tired and thirsty after their long march, northern troops became disorganized as they attacked. Despite these southern advantages, McDowell’s battle plan almost produced a Union victory. An assault on the enemy left flank

initially drove the gray line back. But resistance stiffened around the Henry House Hill, where one of Johnston’s brigades, commanded by Thomas J. Jackson, fought ferociously. “Look!” cried a fellow general to rebel stragglers. “There is Jackson standing like a stone wall! Rally behind the Virginians!” Jackson bought enough time for Beauregard to bring reinforcements from his right flank and for Johnston’s last brigade to arrive. Literally stepping out of the railroad cars and into the battle, Edmund Kirby Smith’s troops spearheaded a counterattack. The bluecoats gave ground grudgingly at first, but the retreat became a rout, the jaded men fleeing toward Washington. Disorganized by their own attack, the Confederates could not immediately pursue. That night it rained, turning the roads to mud and making an advance toward Washington impossible.

While Confederates in Virginia were mired in mud and dispirited Yankees huddled behind the capital’s defenses, armies were on the move in Missouri. A whirlwind campaign by Nathaniel Lyon, the commander of the St. Louis federal arsenal, saved St. Louis from militia raised by secessionist Governor Claiborne Jackson and drove an enemy army commanded by Sterling Price out of Jefferson City. Retreating into the southwest corner of the state, Price received reinforcements and turned northward. Having advanced to Springfield with 6,000 men, Lyon found himself outnumbered at least two to one. Rather than retreat, he launched a dawn attack on August 10. Catching the Confederates by surprise along Wilson’s Creek, Union forces achieved initial success. However, the Confederates rallied, and when Lyon took a bullet through his heart the leaderless bluecoats retreated. Lacking sufficient strength to attack St. Louis, Price marched due north, placing the western half of Missouri in Confederate hands.

The casualty figures from the war’s first major battles sent a shudder across the land. At Bull Run the North had about 3,000 casualties, the South 2,000. Wilson’s Creek produced another 1,317 Union and 1,230 Confederate casualties. Small by later standards, these figures seemed ghastly. For southerners, success took the sting out of the losses, and they crowed about their martial ability. But the Confederacy was unable to capitalize on its victories. The capture of Washington and St. Louis might have produced a decisive political and diplomatic impact, but tactical

battlefield successes without permanent strategic implications did not shatter northern morale or earn European recognition. Although some northerners believed Bull Run proved enemy invincibility, the defeat spurred Congress to greater war preparations. It passed a bill for another 500,000 volunteers. Added to the 500,000 authorized earlier in the month, Congress had voted for a million-man volunteer army! In response, Confederate legislators authorized 400,000 volunteers.

While weathering battlefield setbacks, the North achieved an important strategic victory by keeping the three crucial border states out of the Confederacy. The Lincoln administration prevailed in each state by a different course of events. The government used drastic measures in Maryland, suspending the writ of habeas corpus in parts of the state, occupying Baltimore and other pro-South areas, and arbitrarily arresting

hundreds of citizens. If Lincoln’s iron hand grasped Maryland, the president put on a velvet glove for Kentucky. Hoping to avoid a painful choice between North and South, Kentucky formally proclaimed neutrality in mid-May. Initially both belligerents respected Kentucky’s neutrality. But a Union force at Cairo under Ulysses S. Grant alarmed Confederate General Leonidas Polk, who feared the Federals would occupy the strategic bluffs at Columbus, Kentucky. Grant had orders to take the city on September 5, but Polk moved faster, occupying it on September 3. Grant then took Paducah and Smithland at the mouths of the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers. In rapid sequence both sides had violated Kentucky neutrality, but the South had done so first. The angry state legislature demanded Confederate withdrawal and openly sided with the Union.

Lyon’s offensive had shattered Missouri’s efforts to achieve a Kentucky- like neutrality and plunged the state into four years of civil war within the larger Civil War. When Lyon drove Confederate forces into the state’s far corner, a Unionist-dominated state convention met in Jefferson City and appointed Hamilton R. Gamble as governor. In retaliation, Governor Jackson’s government passed a secession ordinance—and in November the Confederacy admitted Missouri—but the secessionists lacked sufficient military power to control the state. Baffled by Missouri’s politics, distracted by its rampant lawlessness, and surrounded by a fawning staff, John C. Fremont, who commanded the Western Department, brought little stability to the chaotic situation. The renowned Pathfinder was also unable to launch a thrust down the Mississippi as Lincoln had hoped, but in October he finally mounted an offensive that pushed Price toward the Arkansas border. As in Maryland, superior military strength kept Missouri in the Union.

Union control could not save the border areas from the special agony of a true brothers’ war, as approximately 160,000 whites from Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri served in Union blue and perhaps 85,000 in Confederate gray. Moreover, especially in regions where Unionists and secessionists lived side by side, guerrilla warfare ravaged the land as both vied for control over local communities. Although few in numbers, the irregulars cast a squalid pall of barbarism wherever they roamed, fighting with malignant fury for the Union or the Confederacy but also for

personal gain, revenge, and other parochial agendas. The guerrilla conflict blurred the distinction between war and murder and soldier and civilian and brought terror and misery to those caught in its path.

Guerrillas were of two types. The Confederacy organized some units under the Partisan Ranger Act of April 1862. With a guerrilla warfare tradition dating from the Revolution and an exaggerated notion of the romanticism associated with irregular operations, southerners formed dozens of ranger units. The most famous was John S. Mosby’s. Operating in Union-occupied areas of Virginia, the “Gray Ghost” kept his men under military discipline and bedeviled the Yankee invaders. But most rangers were less disciplined and less effective. Other guerrillas arose spontaneously in response to local conditions, especially in the Kansas- Missouri region. For the Confederacy William C. Quantrill deservedly

earned an infamous reputation. But he was not alone. Among many others, “Bloody Bill” Anderson rode with enemy scalps dangling from his horse’s bridle, and Coleman Younger and Frank and Jesse James displayed the thuggery that made them postwar outlaws. Nor did southern supporters have a monopoly on bestiality. Unionist Jayhawkers such as James H. Lane, Charles R. Jennison, and James Montgomery and Tennessee loyalists under Fielding Hurst matched them atrocity for atrocity. Other irregulars like Champ Ferguson, “Tinker Dave” Beatty, and Martin Hart terrorized enemy soldiers and civilians alike and brought the war to doorsteps far removed from conventional battlefields.

Although they maintained a rebel presence in border areas, Confederate guerrillas could not win Maryland, Kentucky, Missouri, or western Virginia for the South, and this northern domination of the border had momentous consequences. It deprived the South of men and resources. Washington remained linked with the North, and southern armies were stretched across southern Kentucky and northern Tennessee rather than along the Ohio River’s south bank, which would have been a more easily defended border. Had the South controlled Missouri, it would have outflanked the Old Northwest and dominated a much longer stretch of the Mississippi. In winning the border, the Union established essential preconditions for ultimate success.

By late fall the North also had an array of new commanders. McDowell’s defeat, Patterson’s incompetence, and Fremont’s ineptitude demanded changes. The day after Bull Run a telegram summoned McClellan to Washington to succeed McDowell; Nathaniel Banks soon replaced Patterson; and in late October David Hunter took Fremont’s place. After his ungracious maneuvering forced Winfield Scott’s retirement, McClellan also became commanding general. When Lincoln wondered whether his duties as an army commander and as the commanding general of the army might be too burdensome, McClellan assured him that “I can do it all.” One of his first acts was to reorganize the high command west of the Appalachians. Henry W. Halleck replaced Hunter in the Department of the West, and Buell assumed command of the Department of the Ohio. Their principal subordinates were, respectively, Grant at Cairo and George H. Thomas at Lebanon, Kentucky.

These officers represented almost a typology of Civil War generalship. All but Banks were West Pointers, and Academy-trained officers dominated high command positions, North and South. Although some officers of southern background put nation above state—Scott and Thomas were Virginians—many resigned their United States commissions to receive new ones from the Confederate States. Lee was only the most famous of 313 regular Army officers (and more than 300 Navy officers) who joined the Confederacy. While professionals monopolized the highest levels of command, the majority of generals were nonprofessionals appointed for their political influence or—at least in the North, with its more heterogeneous population—their leadership of ethnic groups. For the Union, Banks, Butler, and John A. McClernand were powerful politicians, Franz Sigel and Carl Schurz were prominent German- Americans, and Thomas Meagher was an important Irish-American. Confederate politician-generals included John Floyd, Gideon Pillow, and Robert Toombs. West Pointers detested the nonprofessionals. As Halleck wrote, “It seems but little better than murder to give important commands to such men.” Although most nonprofessional generals were inept, this had not always been true: Pepperrell, Washington, Greene, Jackson, Taylor—none had professional training. Furthermore, numerous Civil War professionals were also incompetent, while some amateurs, such as John A. Logan and Benjamin M. Prentiss for the North and Nathan B. Forrest for the South, performed creditably. Even had the failure of many nonprofessionals been predictable, neither Lincoln nor Davis would have dispensed with them. In a people’s war requiring mass armies and high morale, using popular leaders made military and political sense. Rallying diverse constituencies, they strengthened national cohesion and determination.

Broadly speaking, two types of Union generals emerged. Some emphasized their difficulties and the enemy’s opportunities and had little stomach for fighting. They often made their opponents look better than they were. Although unique in several respects—no other general had such a well-developed messianic complex or such an aura of patronizing arrogance—McClellan epitomized this category. McClellan was generally overcautious. A superb organizer and administrator, he strove for perfect arrangements down to the last percussion cap before beginning a

campaign. Since perfection could never be achieved, he always planned to move but rarely did so—and then only slowly. McClellan chronically overestimated enemy strength, another deterrent to precipitate activity. He seemed to believe that the South, being more militant and led by a West Pointer, must be better prepared than the North.

McClellan was also reluctant to fight battles. Perhaps he recognized that technological developments made battlefield decisiveness difficult. Maybe he sincerely believed that maneuvering against the enemy’s communications and occupying enemy terrain would win the war without much fighting. More likely McClellan feared taking risks and was paralyzed by the prospect of carnage. As he wrote to his wife, “I am tired of the sickening sight of the battlefield, with its mangled corpses and poor suffering wounded!” Although admirable humanity, this attitude often makes for poor generalship. Finally, the “Young Napoleon” despised political “interference” in military affairs, especially by such amateurs as Lincoln and Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton. By mid-1862 McClellan regarded both men with contempt. Ignoring the nation’s civilian leadership as much as possible, he misunderstood the political currents that drove and shaped a people’s war, especially when Lincoln considered adding the destruction of slavery as an official Union war aim. Rejecting any shift toward a “hard war” policy of confiscation and emancipation, McClellan remained wedded to a war of moderation and conciliation toward the South, even as events were revealing the inadequacies of that approach.

In his defense, McClellan may have suffered from rising too high too fast. Caught in the transition from the limited war of 1861 to the total war of 1862 and organizing a truly large army for the first time, he lacked precedents. Staff, communications, and logistical techniques had not yet adjusted to the new complexities posed by mass and distance. Only trial and error, under circumstances in which error could be fatal, produced the necessary adjustments. Furthermore, he commanded at a time when Confederate armies were at their peak in strength and spirit.

Generals in the second category, personified by Grant, saw their opportunities and their opponent’s problems and, while not exactly relishing battle, never hesitated to fight. Grant had the advantage of moving gradually up the chain of command, but he also exhibited

intellectual flexibility and learned from mistakes, including his own. He realized that only complete conquest—including the destruction of slavery —would subdue the South, and he was determined to get on with the task. His philosophy left little time for perfecting arrangements. What counted was marching and fighting, even if it involved great risks. Unlike McClellan, who fluctuated between excessive optimism and acute pessimism in a crisis, Grant remained calm. His humility equaled McClellan’s arrogance. He engaged in none of McClellan’s peacock-like displays, preferring to sit quietly on a stump whittling sticks or smoking a cigar. Yet this ordinary-looking midwesterner waged war with a relentlessness beyond McClellan’s ken.

But McClellan, Halleck, and Buell commanded in 1861, and northerners who expected decisive action did not get much. McClellan rejuvenated the Army of the Potomac and put it on display at public reviews. The well-ordered columns and bustling staff officers inspired confidence—and questioning. When would McClellan hurl his impressive host toward Richmond? Not this year, as it turned out. However, McClellan did order a reconnaissance in force toward Leesburg, resulting in a humiliating defeat at Ball’s Bluff on October 21. Insignificant militarily, the battle had important political consequences. Radical Republican congressmen were demanding a stern war, including emancipation and arming of the slaves, that would fundamentally reconstruct southern society. McClellan’s inactivity, proslavery sentiments, and Democratic politics aroused their suspicions. Would he fight their kind of war? Was he even loyal to the Union? Dismayed by Ball’s Bluff, Radicals convinced Congress to create a Committee on the Conduct of the War. Using secretive procedures, the committee asserted Congress’s right to exercise war powers, praising generals who agreed with the Radicals’ philosophy and badgering those who seemed unwilling to wage war to the hilt.

Halleck and Buell also failed to make progress. Lincoln wanted Halleck to open the Mississippi line, Buell to invade east Tennessee. Considering the logistical problems in east Tennessee insurmountable, Buell eyed Nashville and asked Halleck to cooperate in an advance on the city. Preoccupied with the chaos in Missouri, Halleck declined. Nor would Buell assist Halleck. Refusing to cooperate with each other, neither

achieved Lincoln’s objectives, though Halleck made major strides in pacifying Missouri. As in the East, only one minor battle occurred. On November 7 Grant led a 3,100-man force down the Mississippi in transports to attack Belmont, Missouri, across the river from Columbus. In a repetition of Bull Run and Wilson’s Creek, Union retreat followed initial success, the Federals barely escaping to their transports. While other Union forces were immobile, Grant had fought hard, demonstrating remarkable poise despite his army’s perilous escape.

Still, Belmont was a loss, reinforcing the North’s sense of failure as the South won every battle. Yet the northern situation was promising. Although its successes were less spectacular, they had greater long-term potential. Along with holding the border states, the Union began to benefit from its sea power, blockading the South and, in cooperation with the Army, cleaving coastal enclaves out of enemy territory. Lincoln proclaimed the blockade in April, but the Navy had only forty-two ships in commission, and all but fourteen were on foreign stations. Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles undertook an expansion program, recalling the distant ships, refitting old vessels, building new ones, and buying or chartering merchantmen for conversion to warships. Welles also appointed a Strategy Board that considered ways to make the blockade more effective. It recommended the capture of advanced bases to supplement the Navy’s existing southern bases at Hampton Roads and Key West. In late August a joint Army-Navy expedition captured Hatteras Inlet, two weeks later the Navy took Ship Island in the Gulf, and in early November another combined operation captured Port Royal between Charleston and Savannah. By December the blockade still leaked, but with more ships becoming available and the southern coast proving vulnerable, it promised to become much tighter. As 1861 ended, the war had already lasted longer than most people expected, and it showed signs of becoming much larger and longer. Neither side was winning, and neither was quitting.

A Year of Indecisive Battles

Frequent and generally inconclusive battles, several of monstrous proportions, characterized 1862. From January to June dramatic Union

victories occurred in all four theaters, and Confederate defeat appeared certain. But inept Union generalship and better southern leadership halted the Federal advances. The Confederacy launched late-summer counteroffensives that the North blunted during September and October. Then late in the year the South smashed renewed Union offensives on three fronts.

As the year began, gloom pervaded the Confederate high command. In Virginia a few small forces guarded the Shenandoah Valley and Joseph E. Johnston, wondering if he could stop an offensive by McClellan’s 150,000- man army, commanded 50,000 men at Centerville. Equally anxious was Albert S. Johnston, who commanded all forces from the Appalachians to Indian Territory, a vast domain containing only a few widely dispersed troops over whom Johnston exercised only nominal control. His subordinate in the trans-Mississippi, Earl Van Dorn, had 20,000 men to oppose 30,000 Federals. In the western theater Johnston had troops at four positions. Polk held the Mississippi line with 17,000 men at Columbus, confronting Grant’s 20,000 at Cairo. Anchoring the right flank, Felix K. Zollicoffer commanded 4,000 men in front of Cumberland Gap, watching Thomas’s 8,000 at Barbourville. In the center the North could invade along the Louisville & Nashville Railroad or up the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers. William J. Hardee at Bowling Green with 25,000 troops sat astride the railroad, facing Buell’s 60,000 soldiers stationed southwest of Louisville. Perhaps 5,000 men garrisoned Fort Henry on the Tennessee and Fort Donelson on the Cumberland.

Confederate defenses in the middle and east Tennessee subtheater collapsed first. Prodded by McClellan, Buell ordered Thomas to attack Zollicoffer. At the Battle of Mill Springs (or Fishing Creek) on January 19, the South suffered its first significant battlefield defeat. In late January Grant suggested that he could capture Fort Henry, and Halleck consented to the expedition. The next day Grant was underway with 15,000 troops and the Western Flotilla, which consisted of river steamers covered with heavy wooden planking (timberclads) and ironclad gunboats. A Navy captain, Andrew H. Foote, commanded the flotilla, although it was under Army control until transferred to the Navy Department in October. When Foote’s gunboats attacked on February 6, the Confederates surrendered even before Grant’s infantry arrived. With Foote’s gunboats roaming up

the Tennessee, the Federals had cut Johnston’s army in half and outflanked both wings. Johnston retreated from Bowling Green, sending half his men to Donelson and the rest to Nashville. He also dispatched Beauregard to Columbus to withdraw that wing of the army, leaving only enough men to garrison New Madrid, Island No. 10, and Fort Pillow.

Meanwhile, Halleck ordered Grant to move against Fort Donelson, a more formidable position than Fort Henry. The Confederates repulsed attacks by Grant’s infantry on February 13 and Foote’s flotilla on the 14th, and the next day attempted a breakout, tearing a gap in Grant’s right flank. With the door to Nashville wide open, Gideon Pillow, who commanded the attack, inexplicably ordered the troops back to their original positions. With sure instinct Grant counterattacked, breaching the enemy lines. The next day the fort surrendered. Grant’s victories were a disaster for the South. The loss of men and material in the forts was serious, and Donelson’s capitulation made Nashville untenable, forcing Johnston to retreat again. He established a new defensive line from Memphis through Corinth to Chattanooga that, like his original positions, lacked natural defensive barriers. Worse, it left the region drained by the Tennessee and Cumberland Rivers in Union hands, crippling Confederate logistics.

Southern woes increased when Van Dorn lost the Battle of Pea Ridge. During a winter campaign Samuel Curtis’s 12,000-man Union army pushed Price into Arkansas, where he received reinforcements. Before he could attempt another Missouri invasion, all Confederates in the trans- Mississippi came under Van Dorn’s command. Leading 20,000 men northward, Van Dorn attacked Curtis at Pea Ridge. The Confederates mauled the Federals on March 7, but Curtis counterattacked the next morning, shattering Van Dorn’s army. The battle secured the North’s hold on Missouri and made Arkansas vulnerable to invasion.

The southern situation was desperate, but the Union was unable to exploit its successes, giving Johnston time to rally his demoralized forces and to receive reinforcements. Halleck, whom Lincoln promoted to overall western commander on March 11, had ordered Grant up the Tennessee River but warned him not to fight a battle until Buell joined him. With his 40,000 men concentrated near Shiloh, Grant waited as Buell advanced from Nashville with 35,000 soldiers. While the Federals

wasted most of March, Johnston benefited from the South’s first great strategic concentration in the west. Braxton Bragg brought 10,000 men from Mobile and Pensacola, and Daniel Ruggles came from New Orleans with 5,000 more. Combining the reinforcements with the troops from Columbus and Bowling Green, Johnston had 45,000 men. He had also ordered Van Dorn to cross the Mississippi, but he could not wait for him since the Confederates had to strike Grant before Buell arrived. The twenty-mile march to Shiloh was mass confusion, and although the Confederate plan depended on surprise, troops test-fired their rifles and buglers practiced their calls. Yet when the rebels came screaming out of the woodlands on April 6, they achieved surprise. Grant’s overall assessment of the situation was so deeply flawed that on the previous day he assured Halleck no attack was imminent.

The attack smashed into divisions commanded by Sherman, McClernand, and Prentiss, driving them back. However, Prentiss’s men reformed along a sunken country lane, where the Union line held temporarily. Absent when the attack began, Grant reached the scene to find his army apparently wrecked. Coolly he organized ammunition trains, ordered Lew Wallace, whose division was camped five miles away, to come immediately, and requested Buell’s advance elements to hurry. Recognizing the importance of Prentiss’s position, dubbed the Hornets’ Nest, he ordered the former militia colonel to hold at all costs. Prentiss did so, aided by a serious tactical error by the Confederate generals: Instead of outflanking the Hornets’ Nest, they sent repeated frontal charges against it, in effect killing off their own men. Not until early evening did they force Prentiss to surrender, and the Confederate advance soon halted due to darkness, ammunition shortages, and disorganization. That night Beauregard, who succeeded the fatally wounded Johnston, telegraphed Richmond that the South had won “a complete victory.” It had—almost. But Grant used the time bought with blood to organize a new line closer to the river. During the night Wallace arrived, and 20,000 of Buell’s men crossed the Tennessee. Grant had more men at dawn on April 7 than when the battle began, and after a morning of hard fighting the southern forces retreated. Like the Confederates after Bull Run, Grant’s victorious soldiers, as disorganized and exhausted by the fighting

as the vanquished, were unable to pursue. The inability to follow tactical success with effective pursuit characterized almost every Civil War battle.

“War,” as Confederate cavalryman Nathan B. Forrest observed, “means fighting. And fighting means killing.” Shiloh proved it. The first massive battle, Shiloh dwarfed every previous engagement. Minimally trained citizen-soldiers fought with a savage tenacity befitting veteran regulars. Each side had more than 1,700 killed and 8,000 wounded, but Confederate losses were harder to bear. The South not only lost irreplaceable men but also failed to restore the balance of power in the middle and east Tennessee subtheater.

Serious southern losses occurred almost simultaneously along the Mississippi, where John Pope captured the Confederate garrison at New Madrid on March 13 and, with help from Foote’s gunboats, Island No. 10 on April 7. Foote turned the Western Flotilla over to Captain Charles H. Davis in early May. A month later the gunboats caused the evacuation of Fort Pillow, and on June 6 Memphis fell. Southern defenders on the Mississippi were driven to Vicksburg, which in midsummer 1862 was vulnerable from both directions since the Union had also captured New Orleans.

While Confederate defenses in the trans-Mississippi and western theaters crumbled, Federal operations along the coast achieved victories at Roanoke Island, Fort Pulaski, and New Orleans. On February 8 an expedition commanded by Ambrose Burnside and supported by the Navy overran Roanoke Island and, in the next few weeks, captured North Carolina’s inland seaports, depriving the South of blockade-running outlets. Two months later Fort Pulaski, guarding the entrance to Savannah, Georgia, surrendered, and the blockading fleet had one less port to watch. The North won an even greater triumph at New Orleans, the South’s most vital port. Forts Jackson and St. Philip, located seventy miles below New Orleans, protected the city. Just below the forts a submerged barrier of hulks and logs would supposedly stop approaching ships, giving the forts’ artillerymen stationary targets. Gunboats and fire rafts supplemented these defenses. The citizens of New Orleans believed they lived in the Confederacy’s safest city, but they did not reckon with David G. Farragut.

Commanding eighteen warships and twenty mortar schooners and accompanied by Butler’s 18,000 soldiers aboard transports, Farragut sailed up the Mississippi. On April 18 the mortar schooners opened fire on Forts Jackson and St. Philip, but after six days of constant shelling the defenses remained virtually intact. Rather than admit failure, Farragut decided on a daring plan. Northern gunboats punched a hole in the barrier, and in the predawn hours of April 24 his warships steamed past the forts. The enemy bombardment was so fierce the water seemed ablaze and the Southern gunboats fought heroically, but the Union fleet endured the artillery fire, fought off the enemy gunboats, and dodged the fire rafts. About noon the next day Yankee warships arrived at New Orleans, which was defenseless since most of its garrison had joined Johnston. A naval landing party accepted the city’s surrender, and on May 1 Butler’s occupation troops arrived.

The loss of New Orleans, with its factories, ordnance complex, and shipbuilding facilities, was worse than the loss of Nashville. Another entryway for blockade-runners was slammed shut, and the South lost control of the lower Mississippi, allowing Farragut to take Baton Rouge and Natchez without resistance and steam to Vicksburg before going back downriver. In June Farragut brought his saltwater fleet back upriver, meeting Davis’s freshwater ironclads a few miles above Vicksburg. The entire Mississippi was in Union hands, but only briefly. Although the combined naval forces pounded Vicksburg, the city could not be captured without a large land force. Farragut appealed in vain to Halleck for assistance, and the North lost an opportunity to gain permanent control of the river. Instead, Davis returned to Memphis, Farragut dropped downriver to New Orleans, the Confederates turned Vicksburg into a bastion and fortified Port Hudson further to the south, and the Yankees frittered away the summer.

Arriving at Shiloh after the battle, Halleck spent three weeks amassing a 120,000-man army. Intent on avoiding a Shiloh-like surprise, he moved toward Corinth at a snail’s pace, averaging about a mile a day. When the Federals reached Corinth in late May, Beauregard retreated to Tupelo without giving battle. Halleck had excellent possibilities for further action. He could pursue the Confederate army or, holding a vital railroad crossroads, he could strike toward Vicksburg, Mobile, or Chattanooga.

“Old Brains” chose Chattanooga as the next target. He retained a substantial force at Corinth, used aggressive Grant to occupy territory northward to Memphis, and sent cautious Buell toward Chattanooga. Entrusted with Halleck’s sole offensive mission, Buell moved slowly, and enemy cavalry raids by John H. Morgan and Forrest caused further delays as they destroyed supply dumps and railroad bridges, tore up track, and captured Union outposts. Buell’s unhurried pace, rebel depredations against his communications lines, and Halleck’s passive strategy in west Tennessee forfeited the initiative to the South.

Just as improbably, the Confederacy gained the initiative in the eastern theater after McClellan’s spring campaign carried his army to within sight of Richmond’s church spires. Throughout the fall and winter McClellan’s inactivity and reticence in divulging his plans strained the president’s patience. When McClellan finally explained his strategy, Lincoln did not like it. The general proposed a waterborne movement to Urbana, which would place his army behind Johnston’s. McClellan would defeat the enemy force as it retreated to protect Richmond and then occupy the city, ending the war. Lincoln preferred an overland advance to shield Washington with the army and more readily force Johnston to fight. But McClellan was a professional and Lincoln an amateur. Reluctantly, the president accepted McClellan’s plan.

However, Lincoln issued several orders indicating his distrust of the general and his strategy. On March 8 he divided the Army of the Potomac into four corps, a reorganization McClellan opposed, and appointed the corps commanders. Three of them favored Lincoln’s overland approach, and as a group they leaned toward the Radicals in Congress, who despised McClellan. The president also ordered McClellan to leave Washington “entirely secure” and insisted that the movement down Chesapeake Bay begin by March 18. With bold action tearing open Confederate defenses in the west, Lincoln demanded a simultaneous advance in the eastern theater. On March 11 he demoted McClellan by removing him from the position of commanding general. The president named no replacement; he and Stanton would perform the commanding general’s duties. Finally, Lincoln created a Mountain Department embracing western Virginia and east Tennessee, commanded by Fremont. Since the Radicals supported Fremont, his resurrection after his Missouri fiasco indicated the prevailing

political currents, especially when viewed in conjunction with McClellan’s demotion. During the upcoming campaign McClellan became convinced that he confronted two enemies: The gray army in his front and politicians to his rear. Lincoln and Stanton, he feared, had joined the Radicals in a conspiracy to engineer his downfall.

While still reeling from Lincoln’s unsettling orders, the Union commander received more dismaying news. On March 9 McClellan learned the Confederates had fallen back to Culpeper, a move that dislocated his Urbana scheme, since a landing there would no longer be in Johnston’s rear. However, McClellan decided he could still go by sea, landing at Fort Monroe and marching toward Richmond up the Peninsula, the southeastern Virginia district formed by the York and James Rivers. As he examined this prospect, McClellan preferred it. Union troops already held Fort Monroe, and the Navy could protect both flanks. Lincoln did not like this amphibious operation any better than the Urbana plan, but he acceded to it.

An armada of 400 vessels had barely started transporting troops to Fort Monroe when McClellan’s army began to shrink. As Banks’s army redeployed from the Valley to protect Washington, Stonewall Jackson’s 3,500-man army attacked Banks’s last remaining unit, James Shields’s 9,000-man division, at Kernstown. Although Shields defeated Jackson, who had underestimated enemy strength, the Confederacy won a strategic victory, for the attack deranged Union troop movements. Would Jackson have attacked Shields without an equal or larger force? Were the Confederates preparing a thrust at Harpers Ferry, or even Washington? The War Department ordered Banks back to the Valley and detached a division from McClellan’s command, sending it to Fremont. And what troops remained to protect Washington? In Lincoln’s estimation, not enough. Stanton ordered McDowell’s corps not to move to the Peninsula. Believing that Union forces were on the verge of winning the war, Stanton also closed the volunteer recruiting service. McClellan lost not only a third of his men but also the prospect of receiving replacements. Yet McClellan still outnumbered Johnston about two to one, though he refused to believe it.

Advancing in early April, the Union army encountered the rebels’ Yorktown line. Defended by a minimal force and fake cannons, the line

appeared strong to McClellan, who considered a frontal assault risky. He resorted to siege operations, which consumed a month. Just when McClellan was ready to smash Yorktown with enormous siege guns, the Confederates withdrew. As they retreated, they had to abandon Norfolk, a severe blow to the Confederate navy. Plodding up the Peninsula, McClellan found that the Chickahominy River presented a problem. With his base at White House on the York River, the Union commander kept his army north of the Chickahominy, but he would have to cross it to attack Richmond. He also believed he would need reinforcements and beseeched Lincoln for McDowell’s corps, stationed at Fredericksburg. On May 17 the president agreed, but he insisted that McDowell move overland. Stanton ordered McClellan to extend his right flank to meet McDowell. Thus McClellan had to straddle the Chickahominy, maintaining communications with his base and awaiting McDowell while at the same time advancing on the Confederate capital.

The Confederates considered McDowell’s movement a potential calamity, as Johnston could be crushed between McClellan and McDowell. In desperation Johnston planned to attack McClellan, who had reorganized his army into five corps, before McDowell arrived. McClellan had pushed two corps across the Chickahominy, which, swollen by recent rains, separated the unequal halves of his army. Johnston would strike the three corps on the north bank to drive them away from McDowell. Meanwhile, acting as Davis’s military adviser, Robert E. Lee proposed sidetracking McDowell by unleashing Jackson in the Shenandoah. Lee’s advice initiated one of the war’s most brilliant campaigns.

On May 23 Jackson pounded a Union garrison at Front Royal and moved down the Valley, simulating an advance on Washington. After momentary panic Lincoln recognized Jackson’s thrust as a diversion, not an invasion. He also realized the North had an opportunity to trap Stonewall’s 17,000-man army between Fremont, Banks, and McDowell. Ordering McDowell to countermarch away from McClellan toward the upper Shenandoah, Lincoln urged the three commanders to move swiftly and cooperate fully. They did neither, and Jackson, combining knowledge of the terrain with rapid marching, foiled the efforts of 60,000 Federals to spring the trap. Jackson’s Valley campaign allowed Johnston to reorient

his attack against McClellan. When news arrived that McDowell had reversed directions, Johnston decided to assault McClellan’s weaker south wing. At the Battle of Fair Oaks (or Seven Pines) on May 31 the South came close to victory, but Union reinforcements crossed the Chickahominy on one half-destroyed bridge, and the advance stalled. The next day the Yankees pushed the rebels back to their starting point.

The strategically insignificant battle had momentous consequences. Johnston was badly wounded, and on June 1 Davis appointed Lee to replace him. Nothing in the new commander’s previous Civil War experience foretold the fame he would achieve leading the Army of Northern Virginia to destruction, and to immortality in military annals. Like Grant at Belmont, Lee began on an unpromising note. He was sent to oust the Federals from western Virginia; his strategy miscarried, and troops derisively called him “Granny Lee” and “Evacuating Lee.” While commanding the southern Atlantic coast, he earned another unflattering nickname, “the King of Spades,” by ordering his men to dig entrenchments. No nicknames could have been less apt, because Lee’s early wartime activities concealed his true character. No general surpassed him in audacity and aggressiveness. If McClellan took no risks, Lee perhaps took too many. He preferred the bold offensive, seeking in true Napoleonic fashion to destroy, not merely defeat, the enemy army. Dedicated to winning a battle of annihilation, he sometimes imprudently continued attacking beyond any reasonable prospect of success. Lee also needed to broaden his view of the war. Exhibiting a narrow parochialism, he believed Virginia was the most important war zone. He underestimated the problems Confederate commanders faced in the western and trans- Mississippi theaters and the significance of those theaters for southern survival. Yet Lee served the South well. Although costing the Confederacy dearly, his victories against great odds buoyed Confederate morale and depressed the North. Furthermore, Lee’s emphasis on his native state was not entirely emotional. Richmond, the South’s primary industrial center, acquired great symbolic value, and the Virginia countryside furnished men, mounts, food, and other logistical assets.

Lee’s defense of Virginia through daring offensive operations began shortly after he assumed command. During June McClellan shifted all but Fitz-John Porter’s 30,000-man corps south of the Chickahominy and

repeatedly promised he would attack—as soon as he received more reinforcements. Although Lee had 85,000 men, McClellan thought he had 200,000. Not until June 25 did the Union commander launch a reconnaissance in force, but by then Lee had the Confederate army poised to strike. Learning from his cavalry commander, Jeb Stuart, that Porter’s corps was vulnerable, Lee proposed holding off McClellan’s four corps (70,000 men) with 30,000 soldiers and attacking Porter with 55,000, including Jackson’s command. With Porter destroyed, McClellan would be cut off from White House. Lee believed McClellan would retreat toward the York River to protect his lines of supply and communications. The Confederates would then shred the Union army with constant attacks.

On June 26 the Confederates initiated the Seven Days Battles, which consisted of five engagements: Mechanicsville (June 26), Gaines’ Mill (June 27), Savage Station (June 29), Glendale, or Frayser’s Farm (June 30), and Malvern Hill (July 1). Throughout the week few things went right for Lee. Jackson invariably attacked late. Poor maps, deplorable intelligence, and inadequate staff work resulted in uncoordinated assaults. McClellan did not do what Lee expected. Instead of fighting toward White House, he shifted to Harrison’s Landing on the James, executing a midcampaign change of base. Lee lost every battle except Gaines’ Mill and failed to annihilate the Army of the Potomac. Particularly at Gaines’ Mill and Malvern Hill he hurled his men against formidable defenses. As one division commander said after Malvern Hill, “It was not war—it was murder.” The Seven Days cost the South more than 20,500 casualties, the North about 16,500. Yet Lee became a hero. His offensive battered the Federals away from Richmond and wrenched the initiative from the enemy. McClellan, who did not consider his change of base a retreat, believed he had conducted a brilliant campaign, especially since he thought he was fighting against a larger army without any help from the Lincoln administration. “If I save this army now,” he wrote to Stanton during the furious combat, “I tell you plainly that I owe no thanks to you or to any other persons in Washington. You have done your best to sacrifice this army.”

Lee soon gave the South more reason to believe in him. On the day Lee attacked at Mechanicsville, Lincoln consolidated the commands of Banks,

Fremont, and McDowell into the Army of Virginia under Pope. On July 11 the president brought another westerner east, elevating Halleck, who had been so successful in the west, to the post of commanding general (or, as it was also called, general in chief). Lincoln had hoped Halleck would take responsibility for command and strategic decisions, but Halleck disappointed him, refusing to give orders on his own authority since he considered himself as “simply a military adviser to the Secretary of War and the President,” who “must obey and carry out what they decide upon, whether I concur with their decisions or not.” However, Halleck was an efficient administrator, a valuable talent in mass total war, and generally a source of sound advice. The first major question Lincoln asked Halleck was what to do with the armies of Pope and McClellan. Should they be concentrated? If so, on the James under McClellan or the Rappahannock under Pope? Acting on Halleck’s recommendation, Lincoln decided that McClellan should evacuate the Peninsula. Bitterly resenting this decision, detesting Pope, and convinced “that the dolts in Washington are bent on my destruction,” McClellan moved with inexcusable slowness, wasting more time than Pope had to spare, for Lee was hurrying north.

Having organized his army into corps commanded by Jackson and James Longstreet, Lee moved toward Pope before McClellan’s withdrawal began, leaving Richmond sparsely defended but confident that McClellan would miss the opportunity. Jackson led the advance, defeating Banks’s corps at Cedar Mountain on August 9, and within two weeks Lee’s 55,000 men faced Pope’s 65,000 across the Rappahannock. Violating every military maxim, Lee divided his army, sending Jackson with 23,000 men far to the west around Pope’s right flank and into his rear. Jackson destroyed the Union supply depot at Manassas Junction and assumed a defensive position near the First Bull Run battlefield. Pope found Jackson late on August 28 and erroneously assumed that the retreating Confederates were trapped. Longstreet and Lee were following in the footsteps of Jackson, whose task was to hold on until they arrived. As the Yankees assaulted Jackson on the 29th, Lee and Longstreet reached the battlefield and took up a position lurking on Pope’s left flank. The next afternoon, when renewed enemy attacks nearly overwhelmed Stonewall’s position, Longstreet crushed the Union flank and sent Pope in disarray toward Washington. Another humiliating defeat, the Second Battle of Bull

Run (or Second Manassas) cost the Yankees 16,000 casualties. But Lee, whose casualties were 9,200, had failed to destroy Pope’s army.

After his successive victories over McClellan and Pope pushed the invaders out of most of Virginia, Lee prepared to carry the war into enemy territory. But he would not move northward alone. During the fall the South made its only coordinated offensive of the war, attempting simultaneous invasions of Pennsylvania, Kentucky, and western Tennessee. The Confederacy wanted to “liberate” Maryland and Kentucky and allow its armies to live off the enemy countryside. Many southerners believed victories beyond the Potomac and along the Ohio would foster northern war-weariness and inspire British intervention. The prospect of foreign aid was not fanciful. In May 1861 the British government had issued a neutrality proclamation granting the Confederacy belligerent status. In mid-July 1862, Parliament debated a motion for Confederate recognition, and two months later Foreign Secretary Lord Russell and Prime Minister Palmerston considered offering to mediate the conflict. But as the North’s ambassador to the Court of St. James noted, “Great Britain always looks to her own interest as a paramount law of her action in foreign affairs.” Recognition would best serve British interests if the Confederacy looked like a sure winner. As Palmerston told Lord Russell, “The Iron should be struck while it is hot” if “the Federals sustain a great Defeat.”

As it splashed across the Potomac in early September, Lee’s 50,000- man army was not in good condition. Many soldiers suffered acute diarrhea from eating green corn; others hobbled on shoeless sore feet. The high command was also in poor health. Lee’s hands were in splints, Jackson had a sore spine, and Longstreet was in pain from a raw heel blister. With this bedraggled force Lee planned to sever the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad and the Pennsylvania Railroad and destroy the Union army. He was sanguine, for he knew that Lincoln had reappointed McClellan to command. McClellan’s behavior during Second Bull Run incensed the president, who believed McClellan wanted Pope to fail. Yet Lincoln needed someone who could whip Pope’s dispirited troops into fighting shape, and, he said, if McClellan “can’t fight himself, he excels in making others ready to fight.” “Little Mac” felt vindicated, writing that “I have been called upon to save the country” again, just as after First Bull Run.

McClellan actually did have the chance to save the country. When the Federals did not evacuate Harpers Ferry as Lee expected, the Confederate commander decided to eliminate this potential trouble spot threatening his lines of supply and communication. In Special Order No. 191 he detailed a daring dispersion of his army. Under Jackson’s overall command, three columns would converge on Harpers Ferry while Longstreet remained at Boonsboro just west of South Mountain. On September 13 Union soldiers found a copy of Lee’s order, which they sent to McClellan. Few generals have had so much good luck and done so little with it. With exact knowledge of Lee’s deployments and with his own 88,000-man army at Frederick, McClellan could crush the enemy piecemeal if he moved rapidly. Unbeknownst to the Union commander, the situation was even more favorable, because Lee had sent Longstreet to Hagerstown, leaving only Daniel H. Hill’s division at Boonsboro. Instead of marching immediately, McClellan waited until the 14th, when, despite a Thermopylae-like fight by the rebels, the Union army gained two gaps in South Mountain. Lee, who had recalled Longstreet, contemplated retreat. But the next day, learning that Jackson had captured Harpers Ferry, he decided to fight. Assuming a position behind Antietam Creek, he awaited Jackson, who arrived on the 16th. Straggling had thinned Lee’s ranks to about 40,000 men. Believing Lee had at least 100,000, McClellan spent a day and a half preparing to attack, giving Lee’s army time to concentrate.

The Battle of Antietam (or Sharpsburg) on September 17 unfolded from north to south. Initially Joseph Hooker’s command struck the Confederate left, where the fighting raged with demoniacal fury, men screaming and laughing hysterically at the frenzy of death. Then Edwin V. Sumner’s corps smashed into the southern center, where, wrote a Union colonel, “it seemed as if heaven and earth vibrated with the stunning roar” of battle. Finally Ambrose Burnside’s corps crunched Lee’s right, breaking the Confederate line. Dramatically, Jackson’s last division arrived on the double-quick after a grueling forced march from Harpers Ferry, filling the breach and hurling the Yankees back. The disjointed attacks negated Union numerical superiority, allowing Lee to shift men from one threatened sector to another. Furthermore, McClellan refused to commit 20,000 reserves, fearful that somewhere out there Lee was massing the rest of his troops for a counterattack. Actually, every Confederate division was

on the firing line. Antietam was the war’s bloodiest day. As darkness encased the melancholy field, more than 24,000 men lay dead and wounded, 13,000 of them in gray. Despite his severe losses, Lee not only held his position on the 18th but contemplated an attack! However, his discouraged subordinates convinced him that an offensive would be foolhardy. Even more incredibly, McClellan did not attack. That evening Lee retreated, and McClellan did not pursue. The Federal commander took complete pride in his success, but Lincoln was angry that McClellan’s success was not more complete.

Although tactically indecisive, Antietam had important consequences. Five days after the battle Lincoln issued the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, transforming a war for the Union into a war for freedom. The basic document was ready in July, but Lincoln delayed issuing it until the Union cause looked more hopeful, as it did after the Antietam half- victory. Paradoxically, in July McClellan had urged the president to follow a moderate policy, arguing that neither the confiscation of rebel property nor political executions nor “forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment.” Contrary to the Lincoln administration’s expectations, the emancipation policy initially increased the chances of British intervention. Several leading British statesmen believed that the Union’s conversion to emancipation was hypocritical, a desperate move to salvage victory by inciting servile insurrections throughout the Confederacy. Appalled by the prospect of a brutal race war, they argued that England should intervene not only to preserve its economic interests but also for humanitarian reasons. But in early November, the British secretary for war explained to the ministry the dire consequences for England if war erupted with the Union, and interventionist sentiment quickly abated. By early 1863, with the British population increasingly supporting the North’s antislavery position, an alliance between England and the South was most unlikely.

The western theater invasions also ended in repulses. Angered by Beauregard’s retreat to Tupelo, Davis replaced him with Braxton Bragg, an excellent organizer but a poor tactician. Watching Buell’s slow progress toward Chattanooga, Bragg left Van Dorn holding Vicksburg with 16,000 soldiers and Price at Tupelo with another 16,000. With 32,000 men Bragg “raced” Buell to Chattanooga. The Yankees had a six-week head start, but

by utilizing a circuitous railroad route to Mobile, Montgomery, and Atlanta, Bragg got there first. In conjunction with Edmund Kirby Smith, commanding a smaller force at Knoxville, Bragg planned a Kentucky invasion. Since each commanded a separate department, neither could command the other. In mid-August Smith moved into central Kentucky, capturing Lexington and Frankfort. Bragg entered Kentucky in late August along a more westerly parallel track, getting ahead of Buell, who was hurrying toward Louisville. Capturing Munfordsville, Bragg stood between Buell and the Ohio and was astride the Federals’ supply and communications lines. However, Bragg foolishly moved to Bardstown, allowing the Union army to slip past him to Louisville.

In early October Buell headed southeast, stumbling into a Confederate force at Perryville on the 8th. Buell thought he faced Bragg’s entire army, but only three gray divisions were on hand. Bragg, meanwhile, believed he confronted only a small Federal force, but almost 40,000 bluecoats were on the field. The rebel commander attacked and outfought Buell, but he retreated after learning the enemy’s true strength and linked up with Smith at Harrodsburg. The failure to coordinate operations earlier in the campaign may have deprived the Confederates of success. Now Smith wanted to fight, but Bragg retreated to Chattanooga. Coming on the heels of Antietam, Perryville depressed the South and boosted northern morale, but Lincoln felt frustrated. Emulating McClellan, Buell went to Nashville instead of pursuing the enemy. Based on past performance he would be there for some time, reorganizing and preparing, before moving again.

Bragg wanted Van Dorn and Price to strike northward in conjunction with his invasion but allowed them to work out the details. Commanding separate departments, they could not agree on joint plans. Price preferred an advance toward Nashville and perhaps Paducah, while Van Dorn looked toward Memphis and St. Louis. Price captured Iuka, but Grant counterattacked with converging columns under Edward O.C. Ord and William S. Rosecrans. Price narrowly escaped on September 19, his invasion plans foiled. He joined Van Dorn for an attack on Corinth, commanded by Rosecrans, where a savage battle occurred on October 3– 4. As at Antietam and Perryville, an indecisive struggle ended with a Confederate retreat.

After repelling the Confederates on three fronts, the Yankees renewed their advances, stalled since spring, in Virginia and in both western subtheaters. As Lincoln perceived the strategic situation, the North needed unrelenting simultaneous offensives against three cities: Richmond to destroy Lee’s army; Chattanooga to protect Kentucky and Tennessee and open the gateway into the South’s interior; and Vicksburg to secure the Mississippi. The president believed McClellan and Buell would never do the hard fighting necessary to achieve these objectives. They feared defeat more than they craved victory, detested emancipation, and, as Lincoln said about McClellan, “did not want to hurt the enemy.” Burnside replaced McClellan, and Rosecrans replaced Buell. The commander in chief made one other change, sending Banks to New Orleans to succeed Butler. The one Army commander who remained in his post was Grant, about whom Lincoln said, “I can’t spare this man. He fights.” Both Banks and Grant had Vicksburg as their target. Unknown (at least officially) to Grant or Banks, a third force would also converge on the South’s river Gibraltar. In October Lincoln secretly gave John McClernand, one of Grant’s divisional commanders and a powerful prewar Democrat, authority to recruit an army in Indiana, Illinois, and Iowa. With the assistance of Davis’s gunboats, he would move downriver against Vicksburg.

Although proclaiming his own incapacity for high command, Burnside seemed an admirable choice. Personally brave, he had conquered Roanoke Island and fought at Antietam, where he urged McClellan to renew the battle on September 18. Tragically, he assessed his abilities accurately. When he assumed command, the Union army was at Warrenton. Instead of advancing against Lee’s forces at Culpeper, Burnside proposed an eastward movement to Fredericksburg followed by a drive on Richmond. While Lincoln opposed substituting the capital for Lee’s army as the main objective, he approved the plan. Success depended on rapid marching to sidestep Lee and the timely arrival of pontoon bridges to cross the Rappahannock. Burnside’s army covered forty miles in two days, leaving Lee temporarily baffled as to its destination. However, unpardonable errors caused by Halleck delayed the pontoons a week. By then Lee had reacted, getting his army into a stout defensive position along a series of ridges west and south of Fredericksburg. On the

left, Longstreet held Marye’s Heights; on the right, Jackson’s corps occupied Prospect Hill. Recovered from Antietam, the Army of Northern Virginia numbered 75,000 men.

Burnside’s army, 113,000 strong and divided into grand divisions under Sumner, Hooker, and William B. Franklin, crossed the Rappahannock on December 11–12. Franklin’s division opened the battle on the 13th, temporarily breaching Jackson’s line before a furious counterattack closed the gap. Meanwhile Sumner’s men hurled themselves futilely against Marye’s Heights. With Sumner’s division wrecked, Burnside ordered Hooker to storm the Heights. Hooker, known as “Fighting Joe,” prophetically protested that the task was suicidal, but Burnside would not retract the order, and the Yankees, said Longstreet, “were swept from the field like chaff before the wind.” Darkness finally ended the massacre. In the one-sided killing match the North suffered 12,600 casualties, the South fewer than 5,000. This was not Lincoln’s idea of hard fighting. “If there is a worse place than Hell, I am in it,” he said when told of the battle’s outcome.

News from the Mississippi River did not elevate Lincoln from the nether world. While McClernand recruited his army and forwarded regiments to Memphis, Grant began an overland advance on Vicksburg. But, suspicious of McClernand’s activities, he requested clarification of his authority. Halleck, who favored professionals over nonprofessionals, replied that Grant had “command of all troops sent to your Department, and have permission to fight the enemy where you please.” Grant immediately ordered Sherman to Memphis, where he commandeered McClernand’s troops and made a riverborne descent to Vicksburg. Both prongs of Grant’s offensive ended badly. Forrest destroyed long stretches of Grant’s main rail line, and on December 20 Van Dorn wrecked his supply base at Holly Springs. His communications with the North broken and deprived of supplies, Grant withdrew to Memphis, abandoning forever any idea of taking Vicksburg by the overland route. The frailty of railroads made prolonged campaigning deep in enemy territory too difficult. Without Grant to worry about, the Confederates easily repulsed Sherman’s assault against Chickasaw Bayou on December 29. Meanwhile, snarled in Louisiana’s administrative problems and confronted by

Confederates at Port Hudson, Banks came upriver no farther than Baton Rouge.

Rosecrans also failed to attain his objective, though at least he won a battle. On December 26 his 44,000-man Army of the Cumberland moved from Nashville toward Murfreesboro, where Bragg had concentrated his 36,000-man Army of Tennessee. The night of December 30 found the armies encamped within earshot of each other. Southern bands blared “Dixie,” Federals countered with “Yankee Doodle,” and then one band struck up “Home Sweet Home.” Soon the cedar thickets rang with dozens of bands playing the tune, accompanied by thousands of voices with southern drawls and northwestern twangs. In the morning the killing began. Bragg crumpled the Union right, the combat roar becoming so loud that men paused in midcharge to stuff their ears with cotton plucked from open bolls. Although jackknifed into a tortured position, the Union lines held. Neither side attacked on New Year’s Day, but on the 2d Bragg tried to settle the issue, hitting the Union left. After initial success the attack stalled, and on the evening of the 3d Bragg withdrew to Tullahoma. Approximately one-third of the men on each side were casualties. For the North the Battle of Stones River (or Murfreesboro) helped offset the Fredericksburg disaster and Vicksburg debacle and gave Lincoln a much- needed win to coincide with the official enactment of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1. But the victory was not decisive. Success so mangled Rosecrans’s army that it would remain at Murfreesboro for six months recuperating. Bragg’s army, battered but intact, still blocked the pathway to Chattanooga.

The year of nearly continuous indecisive battles that ended at Stones River proved one point decisively: The war would not be short. Neither side derived comfort from this realization. The North’s inability to make better progress in subduing the South fostered discontent across the political spectrum. Radicals demanded harsher war, while Peace Democrats preached conciliation. Antiwar sentiment was particularly strong in the northwest, where some Democrats came close to treason in their criticism of the administration’s war effort. Actually the North had made considerable progress during the year, especially in the west. When 1861 ended, Union forces were poised along a line from southern Missouri to Cairo and up the Ohio to western Virginia. As 1863 began,

Union armies held new positions from northern Arkansas to Memphis, Corinth, and Murfreesboro. Although the Yankees were still at bay, a ripple of defeatism twinged the South. The western territorial losses and the death and maiming of tens of thousands of the Confederacy’s bravest men discouraged even the most resolute rebels. A drastic decline in the home-front standard of living resulting from the twin evils of commodity shortages and monetary inflation fueled the discontent. As the South assessed its prospects for independence, the future was perhaps more discouraging than the past. No one perceived this more clearly than Davis. “Our maximum strength has been mobilized,” he told the secretary of war, “while the enemy is just beginning to put forth his might.”

SEVEN

The Civil War, 1863–1865

“In considering the policy to be adopted for suppressing the insurrection,” Lincoln wrote in December 1861, “I have been anxious and careful that the inevitable conflict for this purpose shall not degenerate into a violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle.” Yet the president always emphasized that he would employ “all indispensable means” to preserve the Union and that he would “not surrender this game leaving any available cards unplayed.” By the winter of 1862–1863 his conciliatory policies had failed to preserve the Union, and Lincoln began laying his unplayed cards on the table. He issued the final Emancipation Proclamation, armed black troops, supported conscription, and continued to suppress civil liberties in the North in order to control antiwar activities. The war’s length and intensity had spawned the “violent and remorseless revolutionary struggle” that Lincoln wanted no more than did McClellan.

Black Recruitment and Conscription

January 1, 1863, was a Day of Jubilee. One hundred days earlier Lincoln had issued a Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation promising to release a final Emancipation Proclamation on this date. But would he? Pressure to rescind the promise was intense, and the president’s racial views remained ambiguous. True to his word, Lincoln signed the final Proclamation, basing it on his war powers as commander in chief rather than on humanitarian grounds. The president took grave risks issuing the document. Fighting for the Union and emancipation might fragment

northern support for the war while uniting southerners behind the Confederate cause. Conservatives in the North considered the Proclamation unconstitutional and feared it would precipitate a race war. The new war aim might provoke even fiercer southern resistance, push the border slave states into the Confederacy, and alienate southern Unionists. Yet few other acts had such important military advantages. The prospect of European intervention ultimately waned further. If emancipation outraged some northerners, others considered freedom a great moral battle cry, infusing new vigor into the war effort. Since slavery supported the South’s economy and social system, freeing the slaves was an excellent method of economic and psychological warfare. As the trickle of slaves responding to freedom’s lure by crossing over behind Union lines became a torrent, southern white men had to serve in agriculture and industry instead of in the ranks. “Every slave withdrawn from the enemy,” Halleck wrote Grant, “is the equivalent of a white man put hors de combat.”

Perhaps the greatest military asset flowing from the Proclamation was the large-scale recruitment of black men. Utilizing blacks for military purposes was not unprecedented. The Navy had always employed blacks, and black soldiers served in the colonial wars, the Revolution, and the War of 1812. Furthermore, by 1862 the Union Army was exploiting black labor, and some generals, without official approval, had organized black regiments. In occupied territory Union officers acted virtually as new masters over fugitive slaves, forcing them to build fortifications and abusing them unmercifully. Black people also aided the Army in less onerous ways—as scouts and spies, teamsters and carpenters, cooks and nurses. Meanwhile, ignoring government policy, James H. Lane organized the 1st Kansas Colored Volunteers, composed of Missouri fugitive slaves and northern free blacks; Butler raised the 1st, 2d, and 3d Louisiana Native Guards from among the free blacks and escaped slaves in New Orleans; and Hunter recruited the 1st Regiment of South Carolina Volunteers from blacks on the Sea Islands.

The government hesitantly moved toward black recruitment during the last half of 1862. The Second Confiscation and Militia Acts of July 17, 1862, authorized the president to employ black soldiers at his discretion, and on August 25 Stanton officially sanctioned raising black troops for the

first time. The secretary of war ordered Rufus Saxton, who had replaced Hunter in South Carolina, to arm and equip up to 5,000 former slaves. The Emancipation Proclamation was the final step, indicating Lincoln’s intention to employ black soldiers to the maximum extent. Dual motives of exploitation and idealism had irresistibly converted a white man’s war into a black man’s war as well. “The colored population is the great available and yet unavailed of, force for restoring the Union,” Lincoln wrote. A song written by a Union staff officer best expressed the element of crass exploitation in black manpower mobilization:

Some tell us ’tis a burnin’ shame To make the naygers fight; An’ that the thrade of bein’ kilt Belongs but to the white: But as for me, upon my sowl! So liberal are we here, I’ll let Sambo be murthered instad of myself On every day in the year.

Yet many people supported black recruitment for noble reasons. Soldiering would give blacks a claim to not just freedom but also equality. “Once let the black man get upon his person the brass letters, U.S.; let him get an eagle on his button, and a musket on his shoulder and bullets in his pocket,” said the black abolitionist Frederick Douglass, “and there is no power on earth which can deny that he has earned the right to citizenship in the United States.”

The organization of black regiments began in earnest during the first half of 1863. Initially the War Department authorized state governors and enterprising citizens to enlist regiments, just as they had organized white units. However, the national government soon exercised a near monopoly over black recruitment. In March it sent Adjutant General Lorenzo Thomas to the Mississippi Valley to organize as many black regiments as possible, and in May it established the Bureau of Colored Troops in the War Department to administer recruitment nationwide. Officially 178,892 blacks, commanded by approximately 7,000 white officers, served in the Army and at least 10,000 more in the Navy. Approximately 9 percent of

all men fighting for the Union were black. Although black army units did a disproportionate share of fatigue duty, they bore an increasing combat responsibility as the war neared its end, fighting in thirty-nine major battles and dispelling the myth of black docility and cowardice.

National conscription was an even more profound assertion of centralized authority. On April 16, 1862, the Confederacy enacted the first national draft law in American history. Fighting for freedom and states’ rights, the South paradoxically forced individuals to serve under central authority. The Confederate congress understood that conscription, although distasteful, was necessary. Casualties were high, few men volunteered, and the 1861 one-year enlistments soon expired. The law made all white males between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five members of the army for three years, automatically reenlisting the one- year volunteers for two more years. Subsequent legislation extended the age limits to seventeen and fifty, and in February 1864 the congress ordered all men already in the army to serve for the duration. Compulsory reenlistment meant that southerners served until they were killed or discharged due to disability, they deserted, or the war ended.

Two features weakened Confederate conscription. First, the law permitted substitutes. The substitute market was discriminatory and fraudulent. Prices soared to more than $5,000, which only the rich could pay, and many substitutes were unfit or soon deserted. When the Confederate congress later abolished substitution and made men who had provided substitutes liable for service, the rich felt betrayed. Second, although the original law contained no exemptions, a mere five days later congress began to correct this “oversight” by providing for several exempt categories; subsequent legislation expanded the exemption list. Exemptions included a large number of state and national government officials, militia officers, workers in critical war-production occupations, professional men, and one white man for every twenty slaves. Southerners abused many of these categories, and ultimately the Confederacy exempted about 50 percent of the men called out by conscription.

The North also felt a manpower squeeze during 1862. Realizing his error, Stanton reestablished Federal recruiting in June, and on July 2 Lincoln called for 300,000 three-year volunteers, but the response was slow. Like the South, the North turned to compulsion, though less

directly. The Militia Act of July 17, 1862, authorized the president to “make all necessary rules and regulations” for states without adequate militia laws. Broadly interpreting that provision, on August 4 the government called for a draft of 300,000 nine-month militia. A proviso stated that a special militia draft would be conducted to meet the deficiency of three-year volunteers in those states failing to reach their quotas. Governors protested their quotas were too high and that the date for the special draft was too soon, and antidraft disturbances occurred in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Under pressure Stanton postponed the militia draft, which never went into effect. However, the threat of conscription brought forth 421,000 volunteers and 87,500 militiamen. Since the government considered one volunteer equivalent to four nine- month militiamen, the states more than met the July and August calls. But it had not been easy.

Confronted with the grievous casualties of the 1862 fall and winter campaigns, the likelihood of even greater losses in the upcoming campaigns, and the growing reluctance of volunteers to come forward, the North needed a more certain method of obtaining men. On March 3, 1863, Congress adopted a Conscription Act (also known as the Enrollment Act) based on the constitutional clause permitting the government “to raise and support armies.” The law established a bureaucracy for administering and enforcing the draft that gave primary responsibility to military officers. At the apex was another new War Department bureau, the Provost Marshal General’s Bureau headed by James B. Fry. At the base were 185 enrollment boards, one for each congressional district. To compile a list of eligible men, a board divided its district into subdistricts and for each one appointed an enrollment officer who went from house to house writing down the names and addresses of draft-age men. Between the apex and the base Fry appointed one or more acting assistant provost marshal generals for each state who would coordinate district affairs and serve as intermediaries between himself and local officials.

In important respects the Conscription Act contained features similar to militia laws. First, it maintained the principle of universal military obligation, imposing it on all able-bodied male citizens and alien declarants between the ages of twenty and forty-five. It divided enrollees

into two classes: Class I, including all men between twenty and thirty-five and unmarried men between thirty-five and forty-five; and Class II, containing all men not in Class I. No Class II enrollees would be drafted until the Class I pool was exhausted. If a man was drafted, the term of service was three years or the duration, whichever ended first. However, as in militia laws, universal military service was theoretical, not actual. Congress intended to raise men indirectly, using the threat of conscription to spur volunteering. The president set draft quotas for each enrollment district based on population and the number of men from a district already in service. Districts had about fifty days to fill their quotas with volunteers. If too few volunteers entered service, a draft would be held to meet the deficiency. Ironically, Confederate conscription was a more forthright exertion of national authority. Southern lawmakers designed their act to raise troops directly, not to stimulate volunteering.

Second, the northern law contained exemptions. The list was unusually brief, consisting of the physically or mentally unfit, convicted felons, a restricted number of state and national officials, only sons of dependent widows, and sole supporters of infirm parents or orphaned children. The North did not allow the occupational exemptions that southerners so successfully manipulated to evade the draft. However, more than 50 percent of northern draftees found a way to gain an exemption, with physical disability being a sure avenue of escape. Some men practiced self- mutilation, while other draftees fabricated disabilities, buttressing their claims with testimonials from unscrupulous friends and doctors.

Third, a drafted man who was ineligible for an exemption, legal or otherwise, had two traditional means of evading service. He could provide a substitute or pay a $300 commutation fee. By setting a fixed commutation rate, Congress kept the price of substitutes under $300, since no one would pay more than that for a substitute. As in the South, substitutes were often of poor quality and likely to desert at the first opportunity; but unlike the Confederacy the North did not abolish the practice. However, in July 1864 it abolished commutation for everyone but conscientious objectors, and substitute prices rapidly increased. Since the South needed men more than money, Confederate conscription contained no provision for commutation.

Finally, to entice volunteers, the North resorted to the traditional method of offering bounties. Although providing a substitute or commuting carried no stigma, being conscripted did for both the draftee and his community. Wards, cities, and counties collected money for bounties through voluntary contributions, real estate taxes, and special fundraising events. States tacked on an additional bounty, as did the national government. The nation spent more than $700 million on bounties, which equaled the entire wartime pay for the Army! Since localities competed for volunteers, local bounty rates spiraled upward, giving richer cities and counties an advantage in avoiding the draft. With bounty piled upon bounty, a man could collect a substantial sum for volunteering, and he could become even richer if he volunteered more than once. “Bounty jumping” became a national scandal. A man would volunteer, collect the bounties, desert, volunteer in another district collecting more bounties, and so on. Not all volunteers were jumpers, but there were so many that the Army detailed armed squads to escort groups of them to the front. The Confederacy, with its more direct method of raising men and its limited financial resources, avoided the bounty problem.

Surprisingly, among those who volunteered, both North and South, were hundreds of women who—for reasons including the desire to be near a husband or brother in the ranks, patriotism, love of adventure, or the lure of a soldier’s paycheck—rejected the battlefield exclusion that being female ordinarily provided them. Moreover, women who had been living as men before the war may have felt the pressure to enlist to prove their “manhood.” In an age when medical exams were cursory and superficial, and when individuals did not carry personal identification papers (such as a driver’s license), enlisting was fairly easy. Hiding one’s identity could be more challenging as a woman made the difficult dual transition from a female to a male persona, and from a civilian to a soldier. Some women were discovered when hospitalized for illnesses or wounds and some when they had babies. At the Battle of Antietam, for example, two were killed in action and three more suffered wounds, including one who had to have an arm amputated. “There was an orderly in one of our regiments & he & the Corporal always slept together,” wrote a soldier in a Massachusetts regiment. “Well, the other night the Corporal had a baby,

for the Corporal turned out to be a woman! She has been in 3 or 4 fights [battles].” Many females served lengthy enlistments without being discovered and, at least in some cases, continued living as men long after the war. When an accident in 1911 required “his” hospitalization, it turned out that Albert Cashier, who had served in the 95th Illinois Regiment, was really Jennie Hodgers.12

If northern conscription remained dependent on the colonial past for some of its operative features, it also represented a radical change from previous manpower mobilization policies. The draft law made the principle of universal military service an obligation to the national government rather than the states. Both in the Confederacy and in the Union the conscription procedure ignored the states. Another significant change was from voluntary to compulsory enlistments as the basis for mobilization. In one respect these changes weakened the war efforts of both North and South. With their intense localism and a strong tradition of voluntary associations, Americans identified with and took pride in regiments drawn from a limited geographic area. These bonds of kinship and friendship between the folks at home and the regiment in the field began to dissolve as the national government put conscripted “outsiders” into the ranks. However, the changes permitted more efficient use of manpower. States had rarely channeled volunteers into old regiments, since governors preferred to create new regiments, earning the loyalty of men appointed as officers. As a unit in the field became more experienced, it shrank from battlefield losses and disease, the numerical decline offsetting any increase in military skills. At Stones River, for example, Rosecrans commanded 139 regiments, representing a theoretical strength of approximately 139,000 men, but he actually had only one- third that many soldiers. Commanders believed that one new man in an old regiment was worth two or three in a new regiment, for, as Sherman wrote, “the former, by association with good experienced captains, lieutenants, and non-commissioned officers, soon became veterans, whereas the latter were generally unavailable for a year.” Although the North and South continued to form new volunteer units, by assigning at least some draftees to experienced regiments both governments increased the fighting effectiveness of their units.

In October 1863, Halleck wrote to Sherman regarding the Conscription Act. “A more complicated, defective, and impracticable law could scarcely have been framed,” he said. Twentieth-century authorities agreed and revamped the process in 1917. The act of 1863 showed them what to do fifty years later: omit substitution and commutation; outlaw bounties; increase civilian participation in administration; and instead of using enrolling officers, make it an obligation of citizenship for men to come forward to enroll. Despite the judgment of the general in chief that northern conscription was a failure, it worked exactly as its authors intended. The government held four drafts, and altogether enrollment boards examined 522,187 men, exempting 315,509 of them. Of the 206,678 men held to service, 86,724 commuted, 44,403 hired substitutes before they were drafted, 73,607 furnished substitutes after being drafted, and only 46,347 were actually drafted. Combining all substitutes and draftees, only 13 percent of Union Army enlistments came directly from the draft. Yet during the war’s last two years the North enlisted more than 1 million men. Some of these were veterans who reenlisted, but most were new volunteers motivated in varying degrees by the fear of conscription and the lure of bounties. Southern conscription more directly augmented the gray armies. It kept veterans in the ranks and produced approximately 120,000 draftees and 70,000 substitutes, representing 20 percent of Confederate manpower. Inevitably the South’s draft also had an indirect effect: Anxious to avoid the odium associated with conscription, an undetermined number of Confederates volunteered.

Although conscription filled the ranks, it also created internal dissension. Long accustomed to limited government, people in both sections considered conscription an un-American and despotic exercise of national power. To the lower classes it seemed especially unfair, since exemptions, substitution, and commutation appeared to make the conflict a rich man’s war but a poor man’s fight. Although opponents of the Davis and Lincoln administrations vigorously cultivated the charge of class favoritism for political purposes, this accusation was unfair. The Confederate and Union armies rather accurately mirrored their respective populations. If anything, unskilled laborers were proportionally underrepresented and white-collar workers proportionally overrepresented. To states’ rights adherents, conscription was

unconstitutional. In the South, Governors Brown and Vance obstructed its enforcement by expanding the number of civil and militia offices that qualified for exemption, and state judges issued writs of habeas corpus preventing the arrest of unwilling draftees. Northern Peace Democrats, often as state-oriented as southerners, fanned antidraft sentiment, sparking widespread evasion, bitter hostility to draft officials, and riots. More than 161,000 men who were not exempt and did not provide a substitute or commute failed to report when summoned by their local enrollment boards. The number of these illegal draft evaders nearly equaled those who obtained substitutes or paid the commutation fee. Enrollment officers discovered their duty was dangerous, since they were assaulted by irate individuals and mobs, threatened and intimidated, attacked by dogs, scalded with boiling water, and bombarded with everything from eggs to bricks. The worst antidraft riot (which included a strong element of racist, antiblack sentiment) occurred in New York City, where four days of arson, looting, lynching, and shooting erupted in mid- July 1863, resulting in about 120 deaths. Grim troops coming from the Gettysburg battlefield finally quelled the outbreak. Lesser mob violence against the draft took place throughout the North.

The Lincoln administration not only freed and armed the slaves and countenanced conscription but also suppressed civil liberties, permitting the occasional repression of newspapers, the censorship of reporters’ telegraphic dispatches, and the military arrest of perhaps as many as 15,000 people. The vast majority of those arrested were from the border states or the Confederacy and included blockade-runners, smugglers, spies, defectors, and refugees. The only large group of Northerners arrested came in the wake of the militia draft and the Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, which generated tremendous opposition among Peace Democrats (reproachfully known as Copperheads). These antiwar advocates urged resistance to both emancipation and the draft, discouraged volunteering, and encouraged desertion. Primarily to deal with resistance to the militia draft, the administration suspended the writ of habeas corpus nationwide. Suspension of the writ, the final Emancipation Proclamation, and the Conscription Act intensified opposition to the government’s war policies. Copperheads accused “King Lincoln” of military despotism and vowed they would not support his

“wicked abolition crusade against the South,” but would “resist to the death all attempts to draft any of our citizens into the army.” But Republicans countered charges of tyranny with accusations of treason. Congress passed a Habeas Corpus Act in March 1863 sanctioning the practices established by the executive branch, and the president vigorously defended his administration’s actions. Under the guise of freedom of speech and press and the right of habeas corpus, he said, the Confederacy “hoped to keep on foot amongst us a most efficient corps of spies, informers, supplyers, and aiders and abettors of their cause in a thousand ways.” Ordinary legal processes did not restrain these disloyal persons, but courts-martial and military commissions would. Furthermore, the infringements were only temporary. Military arrests during the rebellion did not mean that Americans would be denied their constitutional liberties “throughout the indefinite peaceful future which I trust lies before them.”

Drawing the line between disloyalty and legitimate expressions of free speech, press, and assembly is not easy, and Lincoln did not draw it perfectly. Although innocent men suffered injustice, the administration’s use of the Army against civilians resulted in no reign of terror. Moreover, just as Polk established bold precedents of strong executive wartime leadership, Lincoln created equally far-reaching precedents for the wartime interference with basic civil liberties. To conquer the South, he exercised new presidential powers that many people believed he did not and should not have, for liberty squelched in war might be lost in peace.

1863: Year of Decision

As the 1863 campaigning season approached, Union forces stood poised at five critical points. The Army of the Potomac, under a new commander, held the Rappahannock line. Following Fredericksburg, Burnside tried to redeem his reputation with a mid-January movement around Lee’s left flank, but torrential rains turned the countryside into a swamp and the army sank to its knees and axles in muck. The “Mud March” destroyed what little confidence the army still had in Burnside, and on January 25 Lincoln replaced him with “Fighting Joe” Hooker. In the western theater Rosecrans’s Army of the Cumberland occupied Murfreesboro, Grant’s

Army of the Tennessee was north of Vicksburg, and Banks’s Army of the Gulf held the lower Mississippi. At sea Samuel DuPont had an ironclad squadron off Charleston. The South viewed these enemy hosts with alarm but for the first half of 1863 had reason to be optimistic. Northern antiwar sentiment surged, the drive to clear the Mississippi seemed stalled, Rosecrans remained inert, and the Confederacy won victories at Charleston and Chancellorsville. Then in midsummer and fall disaster struck. The North mangled Lee’s army at Gettysburg, captured Vicksburg and Port Hudson, and expelled the rebels from Tennessee.

The Union public expected DuPont to achieve a victory at Charleston akin to Farragut’s at New Orleans. But the tactical problems were not comparable. Once beyond the river forts Farragut could continue upstream, but Charleston was a cul-de-sac protected by powerful batteries. DuPont had a mere thirty-two guns on his eight monitors and the flagship New Ironsides. Moving on the noontime ebb tide of April 7, the vessels came within range of enemy batteries about three o’clock. To DuPont’s chief of staff, “It seemed as if the fires of hell were turned upon the Union fleet,” as Confederate gunners badly damaged all the ships. The repulse was a naval Fredericksburg, and its impact on northern morale was similarly depressing.

Surely Hooker would redeem Union fortunes! Fighting Joe performed wonders in reviving the dispirited army. For example, he abolished the “grand divisions” and reestablished the old corps, insisting that the men of each wear a distinctive insignia to enhance esprit de corps. Hooker also reorganized the cavalry into a single corps. Previous commanders assigned cavalry regiments individually to infantry divisions, a practice that hampered Union cavalry operations, since Lee and Stuart kept their cavalry concentrated. Properly organized and, after midsummer, increasingly armed with Spencer repeating carbines, Union troopers soon demonstrated that they were not inferior to their Confederate counterparts. Finally, the general’s fighting spirit was contagious. When he proclaimed that he commanded “the finest army on the planet,” people expected imminent victory.

Hooker was a skillful commander as well as a proficient organizer. Outnumbering Lee two to one, he planned to leave 40,000 men under John Sedgwick at Fredericksburg and take the remainder of the army

upstream to turn the enemy left flank. Crossing the Rappahannock River simultaneously, the two wings would crush the Army of Northern Virginia. Initially the plan went well. By April 30 both Sedgwick and Hooker were across the river, the latter near Chancellorsville, a crossroads in an extensive area of tangled brush and second-growth timber called the Wilderness. “The rebel army,” exulted Hooker, “is now the legitimate property of the Army of the Potomac.”

Hooker’s strategy placed Lee in a precarious position, but he responded with tactical daring. As he had done against Pope, the Confederate general divided his army, containing Sedgwick with 10,000 men and taking 50,000 troops to assail Hooker. Lee then further divided his army, sending Jackson’s corps around Hooker’s right flank on May 2. A vigilant commander would have crushed Lee’s scattered army. Hooker, however, lost his nerve. When Jackson’s men smashed the Union flank, Lee also attacked and the southerners initially drove the Yankees back. But stiffening resistance and nightfall halted the attacks, with Lee’s army still divided. Most of Hooker’s subordinates urged him to counterattack on May 3, but he refused. Instead, Lee attacked again, reuniting his army’s wings after fierce fighting. Meanwhile, Sedgwick seized Marye’s Heights and advanced toward Chancellorsville. Running another incalculable risk, Lee divided his army yet again. A fraction watched Hooker while the remainder assaulted Sedgwick on May 3–4, forcing him north of the Rappahannock. Lee then returned to confront Fighting Joe, who ordered his army to recross the river on the night of May 5–6.

Although the Battle of Chancellorsville was Lee’s most dazzling victory, two factors tempered the rejoicing. First, Lee’s 13,000 casualties, while fewer than the North’s 17,000, represented a much higher proportion of his army. One of those casualties was especially costly: In the twilight after his flank attack, Jackson rode beyond his lines to survey the situation. As he returned, a jittery Confederate unit fired, fatally wounding him. His death forced Lee to reorganize the army, from the successful two-corps structure into three corps under Longstreet, Ambrose P. Hill, and Richard Ewell. Whether Hill or Ewell could match Jackson’s genius for long marching and tough fighting was questionable. Second, the Union army had again been humiliated and hurt but not destroyed. Accustomed to

suffering and surviving, the Army of the Potomac still manned the Rappahannock line.

Lee was eager to capitalize on his latest success by carrying the war into the North. Since early spring he had asked for permission to invade, but a great strategic debate snared his request. With the Yankees pressing hard on all fronts, which front was most vital for Confederate survival? The investment of Vicksburg, where Grant was closing in on John Pemberton’s garrison, caused special concern. Some men suggested that Lee send reinforcements to Bragg, so that the Army of Tennessee could defeat Rosecrans, threaten Kentucky and Ohio, and save Vicksburg. Lee opposed any scheme for western reinforcement, however, because he could not reduce his army without sacrificing Virginia. Southern railroads were so dilapidated that the North could shift troops more rapidly than the Confederacy; Confederate reinforcements would always arrive too late. Lee also argued that since northerners could not survive a deep south summer, Grant would soon retreat anyway. The solution to Confederate difficulties was an invasion of Pennsylvania, which would dislocate Federal plans, force Grant and Rosecrans to send reinforcements eastward, save Virginia, and allow Confederates to obtain supplies from northern farms and storehouses. Victories on northern soil might gain foreign recognition and foster Copperhead sentiment. Lee’s arguments convinced Davis that southerners should again wade the Potomac.

On June 9, as Lee shifted his 75,000 troops toward the Shenandoah, Union cavalry surprised Stuart at Brandy Station, resulting in the war’s largest cavalry action. Although Confederate troopers forced the bluecoats to retreat, the victory margin was thin. Eager to refurbish his reputation, Stuart suggested a raid into Hooker’s rear, and Lee consented. Departing on June 25, Stuart promised to rejoin the army in a few days, but unexpected difficulties delayed the cavalry’s return a week and Lee advanced blindly. With his men at York, Carlisle, and Chambersburg in Pennsylvania, Lee still believed Hooker was in Virginia. The Federal army was actually at Frederick, and Fighting Joe no longer commanded it. Hooker’s unwillingness to tangle with Lee as the gray column marched from the Rappahannock to Pennsylvania dismayed Lincoln, and on June 27 the president replaced him with George G. Meade. The new commander believed he could stand on the tactical defensive, since Lee

would not retreat into Virginia without fighting. Meanwhile, learning that the Federals were dangerously close, on June 28 Lee ordered his forces to concentrate at Cashtown. Three days later men from James J. Pettigrew’s brigade went to seize a supply of shoes in Gettysburg. They bumped into a Yankee advance unit, John Buford’s cavalry division, which held off the graycoats until infantry support arrived. Although nobody planned to fight at Gettysburg, once the shooting began both armies converged there.

Fighting on the first day was chaotic and fierce, as the Union I and XI Corps tried to hold ground west and north of Gettysburg, but the Confederates drove them through the town and onto Cemetery Hill and Culp’s Hill. As more Federals arrived, the line extended southward along Cemetery Ridge to Little Round Top and Round Top. The position resembled a four-mile-long inverted fishhook running from the barb at Culp’s Hill, along the shank of Cemetery Hill and Cemetery Ridge, to the eye at the Round Tops. The Confederate line ran roughly parallel from east of Gettysburg, through the town, then south along Seminary Ridge. Not only were the Federals dug in on high ground, but in terms of maneuver and communications they held interior lines. Reaching the battlefield at midnight, Meade saw enough by moonlight to know his 88,000-man army held formidable terrain. If only Lee would attack!

Longstreet opposed fighting at Gettysburg. The army, he told Lee, should slide around the Federal left flank, get between Meade and Washington, find good defensive terrain, and force the Army of the Potomac to attack. Rejecting the advice, Lee issued attack orders for Longstreet to deliver the primary blow against Meade’s southern flank and Ewell to launch a secondary assault against Culp’s Hill and Cemetery Hill. Longstreet hammered but did not break the main Union line, and Ewell made only slight headway, securing a lodgment on the lower slope of Culp’s Hill. That evening Meade met with his subordinates to decide whether the army should retreat, attack, or hold its ground. Almost all agreed that the Federals should maintain their defensive posture. Where was Lee most likely to hit? Meade reasoned that the enemy, having tested the flanks, would attack the center. He was correct. Lee planned an assault, preceded by a massive barrage, aimed at the middle of the fishhook. The striking force would consist of approximately 13,500 men stretching across a mile-long front. Lee again entrusted the attack to

Longstreet, who again protested his superior’s plan. But the southern commander waved off his subordinate. “The enemy is there, General Longstreet,” said Lee, indicating Cemetery Ridge, “and I am going to strike him.”

Lee’s plan was almost Burnside-like in its simplicity, and it produced a Fredericksburg with the roles reversed. The artillery barrage shattered the sultry stillness at one o’clock and continued for almost two hours before the Confederates emerged from the woods on Seminary Ridge and advanced as if on a parade ground. Pickett’s Charge, named after George Pickett, who commanded the largest of the three attacking divisions, pitted gallantry against firepower. Forty minutes decided the issue. Yankee batteries rained grapeshot and canister on the exposed ranks. Federal infantry unloosed volley after volley, while punishing fire from the flanks engulfed the column. The storm of hot metal shredded the attacking column, which suffered 50 percent casualties.

“It is all my fault,” Lee told the survivors, urging them to rally in case Meade counterattacked. Within a few hours the Army of Northern Virginia had regrouped, but Meade did not leave his lines. As after Antietam, Lee held his ground for a day before retreating. Battle casualties amounted to one-third of his army, and thousands of men straggled during the withdrawal. Meade did not pursue vigorously. With his army having suffered 23,000 casualties, he seemed content to escort the invaders off northern soil. By late July both armies were again on the Rappahannock, and a long stalemate ensued in the eastern theater. Lincoln was disconsolate when he learned that Lee’s army had reached Virginia soil, and he penned a harsh letter to Meade, which he never actually sent. “I do not believe you appreciate the magnitude of the misfortune involved in Lee’s escape,” the president wrote. “He was within your easy grasp, and to have closed upon him would, in connection with our other late successes, have ended the war.” The “other late successes” occurred in the western theater, where Vicksburg and Port Hudson surrendered and Bragg was in retreat.

A muddled command system exacerbated normal Confederate problems in the west: Too many places to defend, too few troops, and too little logistical support. In November 1862 Davis appointed Joseph E. Johnston, recovered from his wound at Fair Oaks, to command a newly

formed Department of the West that included the armies of Bragg in Tennessee and Pemberton in Mississippi. The command difficulties were threefold. First, the extent of Johnston’s authority was unclear. Retaining the right to correspond directly with Richmond, Bragg and Pemberton could circumvent him. Second, Johnston could not effectively coordinate the two armies due to the distance between them, the South’s primitive transportation system, and Federal control of the Tennessee River. Third, Johnston and Davis disagreed on a fundamental issue. The department commander believed middle and east Tennessee were more important than the Mississippi, but Davis stressed holding the river.

Following his unsuccessful overland campaign toward Vicksburg, Grant went to Young’s Point to oversee the river campaign. Both geography and man had made Vicksburg difficult to attack. Only the high ground south and east of the city offered suitable terrain for military operations. Grant’s problem was to get there. The bayou country fanning northward from Vicksburg was impenetrable, as Grant learned after months of searching for a feasible route. Powerful batteries lining the river presented a barrier seemingly as impassable as the bayous. Grant admitted that the “strategical way according to the rule” would be to return to Memphis and try the overland route again. But in the Union’s grim springtime mood people would have interpreted the move as another defeat, so Grant determined upon a plan as daring as any that Lee devised. His army would slog down the Mississippi’s west side and cross below the city. David D. Porter, commanding the river flotilla, would simply have to run the gauntlet with gunboats and transports. Grant knew he might have a difficult logistical problem once he left his supply base north of Vicksburg. For supplies he would depend in part on a wagon road coming down the river’s west bank and on the Navy’s ability to run additional transports past the Confederate batteries. But the road was tenuous and the Navy’s task risky, and Grant would have to live primarily off the country until he got back to the Mississippi above Vicksburg—if he could.

In early April Grant started his men marching south, and on the night of April 16–17 a dozen of Porter’s ships slipped downriver. Confederate gunners hit all twelve ships, but only one sank, and on April 30 the army crossed at Bruinsburg. The next day Grant brushed aside rebels at Port

Gibson and then paused for more than a week to stockpile supplies and organize a wagon train before resuming his advance. His first task was to keep Pemberton and Johnston, who had patched together a force near Jackson, from uniting. Grant headed for Jackson, winning another minor battle at Raymond and forcing Johnston to retreat. Then Grant turned toward Vicksburg, defeating Pemberton’s main force at Champion Hill and his rear guard at the Big Black River. The Confederate commander retreated into Vicksburg’s earthworks. Reluctant to undertake a siege during the summer months, Grant twice stormed the fortress, but the Confederates bloodily repulsed the assaults. The only way to take the city was by siege.

Throughout the campaign Johnston and Pemberton never agreed on a common strategy. Johnston had urged Pemberton to abandon Vicksburg and join him for a joint attack on Grant, but Pemberton refused, since he believed Vicksburg was a “vital point, indispensable to be held.” Thus Grant was successful even though Confederates in the vicinity outnumbered him until mid-June. By then, however, he had 71,000 troops closing in on Vicksburg. Shelling went on night and day as the inhabitants huddled in basements or caves, subsisting on mule meat and rats, and on July 4 Pemberton surrendered. Four days later Port Hudson capitulated to Banks, who had besieged it since mid-May. “The Father of Waters,” Lincoln happily wrote, “again goes unvexed to the sea.”

As the Vicksburg siege entered its final stage, Rosecrans launched an offensive with his 60,000-man army. Moving with speed and skill, he maneuvered Bragg out of middle Tennessee. Bragg took refuge in Chattanooga, and Rosecrans paused to regroup. When he resumed his advance in mid-August, Burnside’s Army of the Ohio marched simultaneously from Kentucky toward Knoxville. Burnside forced Simon B. Buckner’s Knoxville defenders to withdraw and entered the city on September 3. Six days later Rosecrans took Chattanooga after clever maneuvering again forced Bragg to retreat. Rosecrans plunged southward in pursuit, each of his three corps pouring through mountain gaps twenty miles apart. Bragg prepared to pounce as the South effected another far- flung strategic concentration similar to the one preceding Shiloh. He received reinforcements from Buckner and Johnston, and he anxiously awaited two divisions under Longstreet coming from Lee’s army. But the

Union occupation of Knoxville severed the direct rail link between Virginia and Bragg, compelling Longstreet to take a roundabout route. Before he arrived, Bragg tried three times to strike Rosecrans’s dispersed forces. The attempts miscarried but alerted Rosecrans, who hastily concentrated his army along Chickamauga Creek. At the ensuing Battle of Chickamauga, the Confederates had a numerical advantage of about 10,000 men. On September 18, as Longstreet’s first troops detrained, the Confederates fought their way across the creek. The next day Bragg delivered an all-out attack but made little progress. He renewed the attack the next morning and rolled up the Union right flank. One-third of the army, including Rosecrans, fled to Chattanooga, and it appeared Bragg might annihilate the remaining two-thirds. But George H. Thomas rallied the Federals and repulsed attacks until dark, earning the sobriquet “the Rock of Chickamauga.” That night Thomas retreated to Chattanooga.

Chickamauga was another dearly bought Confederate victory devoid of strategic consequences. The rebels suffered 18,400 casualties, the Yankees 16,100. Furthermore, the Union army retained Chattanooga even though Bragg besieged it. Since the only supply route Rosecrans utilized was circuitous and subjected to rebel cavalry raids, by mid-October his army was starving. With Rosecrans acting, in Lincoln’s memorable phrase, “confused and stunned like a duck hit upon the head,” the administration responded decisively by sending reinforcements and changing the command structure. Stanton ordered two corps from the Army of the Potomac under Hooker to Chattanooga. In the war’s greatest railroad operation, 23,000 men covered 1,200 miles in twelve days. The War Department also ordered four divisions under Sherman to the beleaguered city. On October 17 Lincoln appointed Grant as commander of all forces (except Banks’s army) between the Appalachians and the Mississippi and directed him to assume personal control at Chattanooga. He replaced Rosecrans with Thomas, opened up a direct supply route, and developed plans to break the siege. Meanwhile, Bragg committed a blunder. At Davis’s behest he sent Longstreet to recapture Knoxville just as the Union army was seizing the initiative under Grant’s energetic generalship. On November 24–25 Union attacks drove the Confederates from their siege positions, forcing the Confederates to retreat to Dalton. Shortly thereafter Longstreet retreated from Knoxville, although he

remained in a position to menace east Tennessee. Bragg admitted that Davis had erred in keeping him in command, since, as both men knew, he had lost the confidence of his generals. In October Davis had visited Bragg’s headquarters and in the commander’s presence asked each subordinate whether the army needed a new leader. All said yes, yet Davis retained Bragg! Now, after one failure too many, Davis replaced Bragg with Johnston.

Grant planned for a significant winter campaign, hoping for permission to advance from New Orleans to Mobile and then to “make a campaign into the interior of Alabama, and, possibly, Georgia.” Concern in Washington for the security of east and middle Tennessee prevented Grant from undertaking the campaign. Lincoln and Halleck wanted him to drive Longstreet completely out of east Tennessee and to push Johnston farther back into Georgia. Although unable to undertake his Mobile campaign, Grant did send Sherman from Vicksburg to Meridian, Mississippi, in what was the first example of his raiding strategy. Departing Vicksburg in early February 1864 with 25,000 men, Sherman devastated the railroads and resources of central Mississippi and then withdrew to Canton before returning to Vicksburg in early March.

The North’s achievements during the last half of 1863 gave it a firm strategic position for winning the war. Augmenting the substantial gains in the eastern and western theaters was a success along the coast. Following DuPont’s failure, Lincoln replaced him with John A. Dahlgren, who cooperated with Quincy A. Gillmore’s army forces to seal off Charleston by capturing Morris Island. Although the city remained in Confederate hands, blockade-running became doubly dangerous since ships had to escape Dahlgren’s cordon and avoid Union artillery on Morris Island. The North had tightened the blockade one more notch. Indeed, less spectacularly than the land battles but more steadily, the blockade was strangling the Confederacy.

The Civil War at Sea

The most important aspect of the sea war was the blockade, which the North tried to tighten and the South struggled to break. The blockade’s architects were Secretary of the Navy Welles and his assistant secretary,

Gustavus V. Fox. They helped plan and organize the amphibious operations that captured bases in enemy territory and closed southern ports, and oversaw the Navy’s expansion to 671 ships by December 1864, including 236 steam vessels built during the war. With steam dominating the building program, in July 1862 Congress restructured the five naval bureaus into a new system of eight bureaus. The most significant change was the addition of a Bureau of Steam Engineering, headed by Benjamin F. Isherwood. Working closely with John Lenthall, chief of the Bureau of Construction and Repair, Isherwood did more than any other individual to design the Union’s steam navy.

The steam navy’s growth created special problems. Prices for labor and materials rose during the war, and cost overruns played havoc with the Navy Department budget. As Isherwood and Lenthall supervised the construction of vessels, they often changed specifications, leading to what Fox called “those horrible bills for additions and improvements and everlasting alterations.” The biggest problem, however, was finding capable steam engineers. Although their numbers increased from 192 to 1,805, many were inexperienced. To compensate for the novices, Isherwood designed power plants for simplicity, reliability, and durability. But he achieved these admirable qualities by building machinery that was often heavy, underpowered, and inefficient, resulting in many slow, deep- draft ships with limited cruising ranges.

Whatever problems the Union Navy encountered, they were minor compared to those of the Confederate navy. Secretary of the Navy Stephen R. Mallory faced obstacles that made even a modest naval effort appear impossible. The southern population contained few sailors, and at its peak naval manpower was 25 percent below requirements. The South suffered more than the North from a shortage of engineers, and many of the skilled workers went into the army. Fuel, lubricants, iron, and other raw materials were scarce. The Confederacy initially had major naval facilities at Norfolk, Pensacola, and New Orleans, but the Union captured them in 1862, forcing the South to utilize small yards or build new ones in isolated locations beyond the reach of enemy amphibious operations. The transportation system often could not get even small quantities of materials to these far-flung facilities. Since Davis favored the army, the navy received inadequate funding. Money shortages crippled the effort to

purchase foreign-built ships. Furthermore, constructing warships for a belligerent violated the neutrality laws of various European nations. The South’s achievement was remarkable, considering the difficulties, for it built or acquired at least 130 ships.

The Confederate navy undertook two major activities intended to weaken the blockade. First, utilizing an array of technological innovations, the navy tried to protect southern harbors. With technology in rapid flux, Mallory hoped to pit southern ingenuity against northern ships. The navy department had a Torpedo Bureau and a Naval Submarine Battery Service to develop torpedoes (mines). Specially designed fifty-foot-long, cigar- shaped boats called “Davids” carried contact mines at the end of bow- mounted spars. Torpedoes sank or damaged forty-three Union warships. The Confederacy built the world’s first successful submarine, CSS Hunley, which destroyed USS Housatonic off Charleston in February 1864, though Hunley also sank after the explosion. Torpedoes, “Davids,” and submarines induced a well-founded fear in Union naval officers, who approached enemy harbors and river mouths with increasing caution.

The most ambitious effort to utilize new technology was the ironclad program. Prompted by Mallory, the government converted the captured Merrimack into the ironclad Virginia, authorized construction of two ironclads at Memphis and two at New Orleans, and appropriated $2 million to purchase ironclads abroad. The original purpose of the ironclads was to raise the blockade by sinking the Union’s wooden ships and challenging the Federal Navy for control of the southern coast. The Virginia started the process spectacularly. On March 8, 1862, it steamed out of the Norfolk Navy Yard, destroying Cumberland and Congress. Three other Union ships ran aground trying to escape the iron-skinned beast. The day’s events demonstrated that an unarmored ship could not fight an armored one. Fortunately for the Union, it had an antidote. When Welles learned of enemy plans for Merrimack, he appointed an Ironclad Board to study the problem. It recommended that the Navy Department authorize contracts for three different experimental ironclads, one of them designed by John Ericsson and known as Monitor. The Monitor’s most revolutionary feature was a revolving gun turret: Only the turret, not the ship, need turn in battle. On the night of March 8 Monitor arrived at Hampton Roads, and the next day, when Merrimack ventured forth to

finish off the blockading squadron, the world’s first fight between ironclads occurred. Armor against armor produced a tactical stalemate that worked to the North’s strategic advantage. Union ironclads could prevent southern armored ships from directly lifting the blockade. Henceforth, the South primarily used ironclads to supplement harbor defenses, leaving Yankee sea power unchallenged along the seaboard.

The Battle of Hampton Roads touched off a Monitor-mania in the North and convinced the South that it should devote a major portion of its naval energies to acquiring ironclads. However, the Confederate ironclad program was not successful. The effort to buy foreign armored vessels yielded minimal results, and the domestic building program fared little better, as indicated by the fate of the four armored ships authorized in 1861. The two at New Orleans fell into Union hands after Farragut’s triumph, the rebels destroyed one of the Memphis ironclads in August 1862 to prevent its capture, and the Federals captured the other one two years later. Although the South laid down or contracted for about fifty armored ships, only twenty-two ever became operational. Moreover, the South learned that once it built a novel weapon, the North, with its superior industrial capacity, could produce more of them. Before the war ended, the North had seventy ironclads in service.

The other Confederate naval activity was commerce raiding, which the South hoped would hurt the northern economy so badly that Welles would withdraw ships from the blockade to hunt down the raiders. Commerce raiders included privateers, converted merchantmen, and English-built steam cruisers. Davis issued a call for privateers in April 1861, and the government granted the first commission to the schooner Triton on May 10. A few more ships received commissions, but privateering soon ceased, since privateers had no place to take prizes. The blockade closed off southern ports, and the major European nations had signed the Declaration of Paris of 1856, outlawing the practice. The South possessed few merchant ships, but the government refitted about a dozen and commissioned them as regular navy vessels. But far more important than privateers or refitted merchantmen were three specially built cruisers bought in England. The CSS Alabama covered 75,000 miles under sail and steam in less than two years, capturing sixty-four prizes before the Kearsarge sank it. Its sister ship, Florida, took thirty-eight prizes before the

sloop Wachusett captured the vessel as it refitted in a neutral port in Brazil. The South purchased the Shenandoah to replace the Alabama, and it practically destroyed the Yankee whaling fleet in the Bering Sea during the summer of 1865 before learning the war was over.

The direct losses from Confederate raiders amounted to about 250 ships, but the indirect costs were much higher. Hundreds of vessels lay in port fearing to put to sea, and shipowners transferred at least 700 more to foreign registry to avoid rebel depredations. Insurance rates skyrocketed for those ships brave enough to put to sea flying the American flag. However, though the commerce raiders practically drove the United States merchant marine from the oceans, they did not affect the war’s outcome. Foreign shipping carried northern commerce, and Welles, recognizing the blockade’s cardinal role in the war effort, refused to divert many ships from the southern coast.

Unable to weaken seriously the blockade with ironclads or commerce raiders, the South relied on blockade-running, an enterprise involving private individuals, foreigners, state governments, and the Confederate government. The allures of the business were adventure, patriotism, and money. Initially blockade-running was dominated by opportunistic captains, primarily interested in profit, who brought in high-value, low- bulk items such as perfume and silk that civilians craved but that did not noticeably help the army. In 1863–1864 the Confederate government began regulating the business by buying blockade-runners, taking control of half the cargo space on other ships, and banning a long list of nonessential goods. As the blockade tightened, blockade-running became more skillful and organized. The British yards at Clydeside built special ships. Fast, drably painted, and burning practically smokeless anthracite coal, they were nearly invisible during nighttime runs in and out of port. The business centered in Bermuda, Nassau, Havana, and the Mexican cities of Tampico and Veracruz, where cargoes shipped in bulk from Europe arrived for transshipment to blockade-runners.

In the deadly hide-and-seek game played nightly along the coast the blockade-runners had great advantages. They chose the port, time, weather, and other circumstances to maximize their chances, and even if spotted they were invariably faster than the blockaders. However, the number of ships penetrating the blockade declined as Federal warships

became more numerous and amphibious operations closed Confederate ports, until by 1864 only Mobile and Wilmington remained open. In 1861 nine out of ten blockade-runners were successful, but by 1865 only one out of two made it. These ships brought in impressive quantities of war materials, such as 600,000 small arms, 624,000 pairs of boots, and millions of pounds of lead and meat. Yet this supply line was always tenuous: Union blockaders, storms, mangled propellers, blown cylinders, cracked steam pipes, limited cargo space, and intense competition made it unpredictable and expensive, vastly complicating the Confederate war effort. And, of course, the important question is not how much got through, but did enough? The answer is no. Although leaky, the blockade was one of the Union’s most effective weapons, contributing significantly to the decline in the South’s home-front standard of living and in the Confederate army’s logistical support.

The Sinews of War

By the winter of 1863–1864 the disparity in strength was obvious, as the Union became stronger while the Confederacy, besieged by land and sea, grew weaker. In the North, order and organization replaced the chaos of 1861, manpower and material resources appeared inexhaustible, and industrial and agricultural output increased. In the South, raw materials were difficult to obtain, industrial production lagged, facilities deteriorated, the armies shrank, famine conditions occurred, and defeatism stalked the land. Compared to the Union, the Confederacy faced grave crises in supply, transportation, manpower, and home-front morale.

In the North an improvised logistical effort characterized by shortages and corruption soon gave way to a centralized, organized mobilization that abundantly supplied the Army. When the war began, the Army’s rapid expansion overwhelmed the War Department’s supply bureaus. Understaffed, headed by aged officers, dedicated to technical routine, and uncoordinated, the bureaus were initially as much hindrance as help. As expedients the North depended on cities and states to supply the men they raised and turned to foreign markets. Federal, state, and local purchasing agents and private speculators competed feverishly at home

and abroad (where they also bid against southern agents), buying an assortment of arms and equipment. With a desperate demand for great quantities, buyers paid too little attention to quality—and to honest dealings. Lobbyists, contractors, and speculators descended on Washington and the state capitals like a cloud of locusts, devouring the national and state treasuries. Although the Army’s unprecedented expansion made some logistical chaos inevitable, Lincoln’s original secretary of war, Simon Cameron, contributed to the frenzy and corruption with deplorably lax administration.

By mid-1862, however, most of the inefficiency and deficiencies had disappeared. Congress established investigative committees to uncover fraud and passed laws regulating the letting of contracts. The forces of centralizing nationalism that brought manpower mobilization under federal control also returned logistical mobilization to the War Department’s Ordnance, Subsistence, and Quartermaster Departments. The personnel in these bureaus expanded dramatically. For example, when Quartermaster General Montgomery C. Meigs assumed office in June 1861, he had only thirteen clerks, but by 1865 he had almost 600 civilian employees. War Department organization also became more elaborate. To use the same example, the Quartermaster Department initially had one subdivision (clothing), but Meigs created eight more, dealing with specialized logistical functions such as forage and fuel, barracks and hospitals, and wagon transportation. At a higher administrative level Stanton established a War Board composed of the bureau heads and chaired by Major General Ethan Allen Hitchcock, whom Lincoln and Stanton appointed as their personal military adviser. Acting as an embryonic American-style general staff, the board facilitated logistical coordination. Although it soon ceased meeting formally, Halleck inherited a budding tradition of interbureau cooperation when he became commanding general, which made his task easier. The Union was also blessed with honest administrators in high places, particularly Secretary of War Stanton, who replaced Cameron in January 1862, and Meigs, who spent $1.5 billion and could account for every penny.

Industry responded to the necessity and opportunity presented by the war, quickly converting to wartime production and expanding its output. The war demanded plan, order, and system, transforming what historian

Allan Nevins called “a loose, inchoate, uncrystallized society” into an organized one. The war intensified business trends already evident in the antebellum era as industries became increasingly concentrated and coordinated. Truly national industries arose that utilized mass, mechanized production techniques and more sophisticated managerial methods. Without any economic controls, American industry geared up so successfully that foreign purchases ceased in mid-1862, and surpluses rather than shortages became the rule. By the end of 1862 Lincoln believed logistical excess hampered the war effort. “My dear General,” he wrote in exasperation to Banks, “this expanding, and piling up of impedimenta, has been, so far, almost our ruin, and will be our final ruin if it is not abandoned.”

Northern acquisition of weapons exemplified the evolution from hectic improvisation to an efficient system. When the war commenced, the North turned to European markets, buying 738,000 firearms in fifteen months. Most of the foreign weapons were dependable but some were inferior, and agents scouring the Continent paid premium prices for all of them. Meanwhile, the government stimulated the private arms industry by offering profitable contracts, and it increased production at government arsenals. The private and public armaments industries that produced fewer than 50,000 firearms in 1860 turned out more than 2.5 million during the war, and after 1862 foreign purchasing stopped.

While the North’s logistical mobilization expanded, the South’s peaked in early 1863 and then declined. Fundamental interlocking problems beset southern logistics. The Confederacy had few preexisting industries to expand and lacked sufficient raw materials upon which to build an industrial base. The South did have an existing agricultural foundation, dominated by tobacco and cotton. Efforts to convert to grain and meat production did not completely succeed. Northern conquests eroded the South’s ability to make a sustained logistical effort, forcing it to draw raw materials and food from an ever-smaller area. The inability to meet the army’s needs from domestic sources increased Confederate dependence on hazardous blockade-running. Economic difficulties, produced in large part by inflation, crippled both domestic and foreign procurement. Skilled labor remained scarce, and the transportation system faltered, ruining the essential link between procurement and timely distribution.

While the North added 4,000 miles of track, increased its rolling stock, and captured or disrupted critical southern railroad lines, the South barely kept a few lines operating by cannibalizing less important lines, and it could not replace worn-out rolling stock. Furthermore, the Union occupied the upper south horse- and mule-breeding region, making wagon transport difficult.

Nothing hurt the supply services as much as the failure of decisive action and hard-headed planning by the Davis administration. The South needed a careful weighing of assets and liabilities, the setting of strict priorities, and centralized direction in order to use its resources efficiently. But Confederate leaders allowed events to control planning, resulting in uncoordinated, tardy, and generally impotent centralization of the logistical effort. The government gave no overall direction to the supply bureaus, which often bid against each other for materials and labor. Davis never permitted the military to utilize the railroads to best advantage and was slow to exert even moderate control over blockade-running. The Confederacy could have developed an extensive trade through Union lines, but the president at first prohibited it and then shackled the trade with so many regulations that it never fully developed. In sum, Davis’s defective supply management made unavoidable problems worse.

The efforts of Lucius B. Northrop, the Commissary General of Subsistence, and Josiah Gorgas, chief of the Bureau of Ordnance, illustrate Confederate problems. In a rich agricultural region like the South, food should have been the least of difficulties. But the North soon overran or isolated its most productive areas, such as Tennessee, and in states remaining under rebel control labor shortages appeared as white men went into the army and slaves fled to Union lines. Farm machinery broke down, with no spare parts available. As Confederate currency depreciated, farmers became less willing to sell, since they rightly believed future prices would be higher. Confronted by massive hoarding, the government resorted to impressment and a tax in kind. The War Department published a price schedule for impressed goods, but the prices were far below prevailing market rates. Under the tax in kind the Subsistence Bureau confiscated one-tenth of a farmer’s produce. The forcible seizures of food caused outraged protests, especially when much of the produce rotted before the transportation system could move it to

the army. Evasion and outright resistance became common. In desperation Northrop tried to import meat—a bulky and hence expensive item—adding to the bureau’s financial woes. By the spring of 1863 the food situation was critical. Lee’s pickets along the Rappahannock shouted to their enemy counterparts that they had a new, tough general. When the Yankees asked for his name, the pickets replied, “General Starvation, by God.”

Gorgas performed wonders in arming the South from three sources: Blockade-running, battlefield captures, and domestic manufacturing. He bought blockade-runners for his bureau’s use, importing large quantities of firearms, saltpeter, lead, and percussion caps. Organized battlefield scavenging yielded about 80,000 weapons during the 1862 spring and summer campaigns alone. But the domestic arms industry was Gorgas’s most remarkable accomplishment, as he expanded or constructed armories, arsenals, and depots throughout the South. Yet shortages prevented Gorgas from doing more. Lack of money retarded the work of his European purchasing agent, Caleb Huse. Minerals remained scarce despite the abilities of Isaac M. St. John, who headed the bureau’s Nitre and Mining corps, which became a separate bureau in April 1863. Charged with finding and developing mineral resources, St. John strove imaginatively to supply them. For example, when Bragg withdrew from Tennessee, losing the mines that produced 90 percent of the South’s copper, St. John salvaged copper from apple-brandy stills. But he could not perform miracles. The scarcity of pig iron, for instance, prevented the South’s largest manufacturing establishment, the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond, Virginia, from operating at more than one-third capacity. The loss of a single skilled worker could be disastrous. When Yankee raiders killed John Jones, an expert barrel straightener, the Richmond Armory’s production dropped by 369 rifles per month, and it took several months to train a replacement. Finally, Gorgas wanted to centralize operations at a few secure locations, but the railroads could not haul raw materials or finished products great distances.

If Confederate logistical support diminished after 1863, so did southern armies, and the two phenomena were not unrelated. The “present for duty” total was 253,208 on January 1, 1863, but only 154,910 two years later. Casualties and disease accounted for part of the shrinkage,

but two other factors were more important in the Confederate army’s disintegration. The feeble conscription enforcement machinery all but collapsed and was unable to provide a steady flow of new recruits. Meanwhile, the number of deserters, which would total more than 100,000 during the war, increased dramatically. Although the Union Army had twice as many deserters, the effect on the larger Federal force was less severe. To the South the absence of 100,000 men was of paramount importance, especially since the army had to detail men to track down the deserters, further reducing available manpower. Deserters also invariably took their arms and equipment, which the South could ill afford to replace.

Both sides tried to control desertion by similar means: Stationing guards at fords, ferries, and bridges; offering rewards for capturing deserters; appeals by officers, politicians, and editors; amnesty offers; and drastic punishment. Nothing worked. Many Confederate deserters entered Union lines, but most took to the hills, caves, and swamps, often joining draft dodgers to form armed bands that defied authorities. A few Federal deserters went over to the enemy, some fled to Canada or Mexico, but like southern deserters most sought refuge in inaccessible areas in their home section. Why did men desert? Some reasons were exactly the same for Billy Yank and Johnny Reb, such as cowardice before a battle or lack of devotion to the cause among conscripts and substitutes. Other reasons, although similar, varied in degree. The hardships of soldiering and worry about the family back home influenced men in both armies, but more so in the Confederacy, where the privations were much greater in the service and behind the lines. Some causes were unique to each army. The northern bounty system encouraged desertion, while rising defeatism on the southern home front, conveyed to soldiers through letters and rumors, motivated deserters, who knew they would get a sympathetic reception from their families and friends.

“The people are soul-sick and heartily tired of the hateful, hopeless strife,” wrote a prominent Georgian. “We have had enough of want and woe, of cruelty and carnage, enough of cripples and corpses. There is an abundance of weeping parents, bereaved widows, and orphaned children in the land.” Such sentiments represented the collapse of civilian morale that preceded, and contributed to, the army’s defeat. Between 1861 and

1864 the South managed to maintain effective armies, but it failed to preserve the population’s well-being. Shortages and inflation, the fear of a centralized government impinging on individual and state liberty, and the hopelessness arising from losses on the battlefield and in the international arena fostered a southern peace movement. People carried money to market in a basket and brought home their purchases in a purse—or so people said—and when Davis called for a day of fasting and prayer in March 1863, one man wrote that the president had asked for “fasting in the midst of famine!” That spring bread riots occurred in five cities, and everywhere gaunt-looking people wore dingy clothes. The knowledge that the North was virtually untouched by the war’s ravages made the privations especially unbearable. The contrast was so stark that some southerners urged soldiers to desert to the Yankees “whear you can get plenty and not stay in this one-horse barefooted naked and famine stricken Southern Confederacy.”

The Confederate government, wrote a North Carolina congressman in 1863, is becoming “a consolidated military despotism.” Defining liberty as freedom from an arbitrary government, many southerners agreed with him. For popular liberty to survive, civil power must control the military, and state governments must protect the populace from the inevitable authoritarian tendencies of a central government. Yet the dual safeguards of civilian control and strong states seemed to be disappearing. Conscription, the periodic suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, arbitrary arrests, the impressment of private property, and novel taxes all spurred doubts about the justness of the Confederate cause. The government defended its actions on the grounds of temporary military necessity, but more and more civilians attested to the evils without acknowledging the necessity.

Had the South been winning, the privations and infringements might have been endurable. But even when the South won a battle the North became more powerful, and when the North won a battle the South became permanently weaker. By 1864 all hope that foreign aid would redress the imbalance was gone. Skillful northern diplomacy prevented an internal conflict from becoming an international war. Many reasons accounted for British nonintervention: English dependence on northern foodstuffs, access to new cotton supplies, turmoil in Europe, fear of what

might happen to Canada and to British commerce in a war with the Union, and an unwillingness to side with slavery. The British government also wanted to establish precedents by respecting the blockade, a weapon that it often used. Most important, the South did not earn recognition on the battlefield. Realizing that England would never intervene, in August 1863 Davis canceled the diplomatic mission to London, and in December he told the Confederate Congress that European powers had become “positively unfriendly.”

Incipient peace sentiment found organized expression in the Peace and Constitutional Society, the Peace Society, the Order of the Heroes of America, and other smaller societies. Dedicated to ending the war, these organizations resisted Confederate authority, discouraged enlistments, and assisted invading Union armies. Yet if some southerners despaired, most remained committed to independence. Tenacity among civilian leaders, the fighting prowess of rebel soldiers, and a dash of luck might reverse the war’s adverse course. Northern Copperhead sentiment was by no means dead, and although the South could no longer win an outright military victory, it might forestall Union conquest long enough that the Yankees would give up in frustration.

The Final Campaigns, 1864–1865

“There is no enthusiasm for Gen. Grant; and on the other hand, there is no prejudice against him. We are prepared to throw up our hats when he shows himself the great soldier in Virginia against Lee and the best troops of the rebels.” So wrote a colonel in the Army of the Potomac upon learning that Grant had been commissioned a lieutenant general on March 9, 1864, and replaced Halleck as general in chief. Eastern soldiers were skeptical about this westerner who now held a rank that only George Washington had previously held on a permanent basis. Yet they were ready to embrace him if he could duplicate his western successes against the Army of Northern Virginia, which they thought superior to any army that Grant had defeated beyond the Appalachians.

With Grant’s promotion an awkward but workable command system with modern overtones emerged. To facilitate communications between Lincoln and Grant and between the commanding general and his

department commanders, the War Department established the position of chief of staff. Halleck, who had been functioning informally as chief of staff since the summer of 1862, filled the new post. His ability to translate civilian thoughts into military language and vice versa ensured that Lincoln and Grant never misunderstood each other. The chief of staff also relieved Grant of the burden of personally corresponding with his department commanders. Halleck’s position was especially important since Grant did not establish his headquarters in Washington but took the field with the Army of the Potomac, though he left Meade in tactical command of the Army.

Grant’s plan for the spring campaign demonstrated a grand strategic design that would put simultaneous pressure on as many fronts as possible, working “all parts of the Army to-gether, and, somewhat towards a common center.” In the east, Meade would assail the Army of Northern Virginia, assisted by smaller forces operating on the strategic flanks. Moving from Fort Monroe toward Richmond via the James River, Butler’s Army of the James would capture the capital if possible but at least sever Lee’s supply lines running south to Petersburg. Franz Sigel would move up the Shenandoah, depriving the south of the Valley’s resources. Without supplies and threatened in the rear and on the flanks, Lee would have to move into the open to fight. In the west, Grant wanted Banks to move against Mobile and then thrust toward Georgia to cooperate with Sherman, whose task was to move against Johnston’s army and then “to get into the interior of the enemy’s country as far as you can, inflicting all the damage you can upon their War resources.” While ravaging the countryside Sherman was also determined to strike at civilian morale. “My aim, then,” he wrote, “was to whip the rebels, to humble their pride, to follow them to their inmost recesses, and make them fear and dread us.”

From the start the plan went awry. Banks did not advance toward Mobile. Instead, Lincoln ordered him up the Red River to shore up the reconstructed pro-Unionist governments that had been organized in occupied portions of Arkansas and Louisiana, to warn the French in Mexico not to become too ambitious, and to seize the region’s cotton supplies. Since it pointed away from Sherman and Grant, the Red River campaign was a strategic blunder, made worse by Banks’s inept generalship. When a Confederate army defeated his advance divisions at

Mansfield on April 8, Banks retreated to New Orleans. The two other political generals performed no better. Sigel confronted an outnumbered Confederate force at New Market on May 15. When the rebels attacked, Sigel excitedly issued orders in German to his English-speaking staff, contributing to a Union debacle. Butler initially outnumbered the scratch force facing him by six or seven to one, but he avoided capturing Richmond or Petersburg or cutting the vital rail lines. The Confederates penned up his army inside Bermuda Hundred, “as completely shut off from further operations directly against Richmond,” wrote Grant, “as if it had been in a bottle strongly corked.”

Grant had a very costly encounter with Lee. As the Army of the Potomac moved into the Wilderness on May 4, the commanding general believed he could defeat the Confederates somewhere between the Rapidan and the James. He had a two-to-one numerical superiority, the subsidiary attacks by Butler and Sigel would supposedly provide diversions, and the Federals had the initiative. Lee, however, also had advantages. The terrain provided defensive positions, morale remained reasonably high despite austere conditions and civilian backsliding, and a sense of desperation honed his fighting instincts. “We must destroy this army of Grant’s before he gets to the James River,” Lee wrote. “If he gets there, it will become a siege, and then it will be a mere question of time.” Lee awaited Grant not far from where he had humiliated Hooker a year earlier, and on May 5 the Battle of the Wilderness began. After two days 17,000 Federals and 11,000 rebels were casualties. Grant had been jolted as badly as Hooker, and when the wagons moved rearward, soldiers thought that, as usual, they were retreating. But orders came for the army to move south. No retreat! Troops sang with joy, even though another cauldron awaited them in the near future.

What followed was a five-week ordeal in which a battle and a campaign became synonymous. Previous battles lasted several days and then the armies disengaged to recuperate. Now the fighting was continuous. Incessant skirmishing and shelling accompanied the almost weekly battles. Grant kept moving southeast, trying to outflank Lee, but the Army of Northern Virginia anticipated each move, raced along interior lines, and repeatedly blocked the way. The first flanking movement brought the armies to Spotsylvania Court House, where ferocious fighting occurred on

May 10 and 12. Then Grant looped to the southeast, but Lee met him on the North Anna; the Federals again shifted, only to run into the rebels at Totopotomy Creek; still another flanking movement ended at Cold Harbor, where Grant launched an all-out attack on June 3. Grant always regretted ordering this ill-conceived frontal assault, which gained little but cost thousands in dead and wounded.

After more than a week of nasty trench warfare around Cold Harbor, on the night of June 12–13 Grant crossed the James heading for Petersburg, the railroad hub serving the capital. Seize Petersburg and Lee would have to come out from behind his entrenchments to fight for his supply lines. Grant conducted the maneuver brilliantly, leaving Lee mystified as to his destination and intentions. By June 15 the Federal army was below the James, while Lee was still north of it, and only a thin gray line manned the Petersburg defenses. But Beauregard’s heroic defense, and the Union forces’ conflicting orders and ill-coordinated attacks, allowed the rebels to hold the city until Lee awoke to his danger and moved the Army of Northern Virginia into the defenses. The armies then settled into a siege that would last nine months.

The Wilderness-to-Petersburg campaign earned Grant the reputation of a plodding butcher who resorted to slaughterhouse tactics, knowing that even if he lost two men to every rebel, the North would still win. True, the campaign extracted a terrible toll: 64,000 Union and 30,000 Confederate casualties. But Grant did not want a head-on killing match. With skill and ingenuity he tried to flush Lee into the open, but subordinates poorly executed good orders, and Lee parried each thrust by waging a stolid defensive struggle, refusing to risk his dwindling manpower outside the protecting trenches. Although Grant did not destroy Lee, he pinned the Army of Northern Virginia down in the strategic arena. Unlike Pope or Hooker, Grant did not disengage and let Lee seize the initiative. Remorselessly and at great cost he prevented Lee from launching an offensive that could restore the strategic balance.

Lincoln recognized this considerable achievement and urged Grant to “Hold on with a bull-dog grip, and chew and choke as much as possible.” Grant needed no special prompting as he sought to snap Lee’s defenses either by a breakthrough or by overextending them. The most famous breakthrough attempt was the Battle of the Crater on July 30. The

Yankees dug a long tunnel and placed tons of powder under a Confederate redoubt. When the explosion went off, the position disappeared in a geyser of mud, timbers, and mangled Confederates, creating an enormous gap in Lee’s lines. However, tragic blundering, including sending men into the crater instead of around it, gave Lee time to recover. “Such opportunity for carrying fortifications I have never seen,” Grant sadly wired to Washington, “and do not expect again to have.” Meanwhile, Grant pushed his lines westward, trying to cut Lee’s supply arteries, spreading the Confederate defenders more thinly in the ever-extending trenchworks.

While Grant fought to Petersburg, Sherman maneuvered to Atlanta. Coordinating his offensive with Grant’s, Sherman faced difficult problems. Supply depended on the railroad back to Nashville, which, said Sherman, “takes a whole army to guard, each foot of rail being essential to the whole.” The rugged terrain, which Johnston knew how to utilize, was ideal for defense. Rather than attack at every opportunity, Johnston preferred to concede territory and conserve manpower. He wanted to draw the Federals deep into southern territory, inviting them to make frontal assaults against prepared positions, and await that supreme moment to unleash a lethal counterstroke. But Sherman refused to attack and instead flanked the Confederate left, never leaving an opening for Johnston to exploit. The armies engaged in a minuet, dancing from Johnston’s initial position along Rocky Face Ridge to Kennesaw Mountain, where, mistakenly assuming Johnston had overextended his lines and left his center vulnerable, Sherman attacked on June 27. Suffering 3,000 casualties for his effort, he resumed the indirect approach, inducing Johnston to withdraw behind the Chattahoochee River. Then for the first time the Yankees flanked to the east and Johnston fell back to Peach Tree Creek.

President Davis watched the campaign with dismay. He had opposed retreating, and his confidence in Johnston waned in proportion to the length of the retreat. When the commander refused to give a firm commitment to defend Atlanta, Davis’s tolerance snapped. The city had a symbolic significance second only to Richmond’s, contained invaluable war industries, and was the last important railroad link between the west and Virginia. Losing it, especially without a fight, would be a severe blow,

and on July 17 Davis placed John B. Hood in command of the Army of Tennessee. Hood had an arm mangled at Gettysburg and lost a leg at Chickamauga, but his fighting spirit remained intact. As both Sherman and Davis expected, Hood assailed the Federals. At the Battles of Peach Tree Creek, Atlanta, and Ezra Church, fought between July 20 and 28, Union troops had the advantage of entrenchments and inflicted 13,000 casualties at a cost of 6,000. Hood poured out the army’s lifeblood to no effect, except to decrease morale and increase desertions. Davis ordered him not to attack again, and the army assumed a defensive stance in the trenches surrounding Atlanta. Like Grant at Petersburg, Sherman undertook a siege.

With the war degenerating into a protracted siege in both theaters and apparently stalemated, the northern public’s determination wavered. The North expected imminent victory, anticipating that the Confederacy could not survive for long after the 1863 defeats; but instead of collapsing, the South seemed capable of prolonging the war indefinitely. Lincoln knew that the enemy armies retained little of their former striking power, but most people did not share his appreciation for his generals’ accomplishments. Civilians saw that Meade and Sherman had failed to crush Lee and Johnston or to capture Richmond and Atlanta. They also saw the grisly casualty lists, especially from Grant’s theater, and the South’s ability to fight back: In July, Jubal Early’s corps rampaged down the Valley, unbeknown to Grant for several weeks, reaching the outskirts of Washington on July 11. Early soon withdrew, but he did not go far and remained a threat.

As frustration increased, the 1864 election became a referendum on the war. The Democrats, who nominated McClellan, adopted an anti- emancipation, pro-peace platform. As the public feeling that the South could never be defeated increased, Lincoln received such pessimistic reports that he predicted his own defeat. Ironically, a dramatic reversal in the war was already underway; it began at Mobile Bay in a three-week August campaign. Farragut led a fleet through the minefields and past the forts protecting the bay’s entrance, defeated an enemy naval squadron, and helped capture the forts, sealing Mobile off from the outside world. A week after the last fort capitulated, Sherman captured Atlanta. Although Hood’s army escaped, the North exploded in celebrations. Further good

news came from the Valley, where Grant ordered Philip H. Sheridan to destroy Early’s army and turn the Shenandoah into “a barren waste.” With a large numerical advantage, Sheridan defeated Early at Opequon, Fisher’s Hill, and Cedar Creek and systematically destroyed the Shenandoah’s resources, ending organized military operations in the Valley. Military success paved the way for Lincoln’s overwhelming reelection, dashing southern hopes that McClellan’s election meant independence. People everywhere realized that the election demonstrated the North’s resurrected dedication to victory.

Although the South had no chance of winning after Lincoln’s reelection, the war continued for another six months. In Georgia the armies that had waltzed together for months parted company. After he evacuated Atlanta, Hood moved north, threatening Sherman’s railroad line, and for a month the Federals futilely chased him. Sherman finally decided to avoid dependence on vulnerable supply lines and undertake a massive raid through Georgia, while Hood planned an invasion into Tennessee. Sherman’s purpose was primarily logistical and psychological: To cripple southern resources and to show even diehard rebels that the Confederacy was powerless. He left Atlanta with 62,000 men in mid- November. Foraging off the land, they cut a 250-mile swath against token resistance and captured Savannah on December 21. Only the veteran character of Sherman’s army allowed it to complete the march. Nearly four out of five enlisted men and nearly 100 percent of the noncommissioned officers had been in service since 1862. Consequently they were campaign-toughened, inured to hardship and disease, self- reliant, and deeply committed to Union victory. They had also developed a ruthless, callous attitude toward enemy civilians that characterized so many experienced troops on both sides by 1864–1865, so they embraced their commander’s goal of instilling fear in noncombatants as a means to hasten the war’s end.

While Sherman’s veterans advanced through the Confederate heartland, the Army of Tennessee marched to its death. At the Battle of Franklin on November 30, Hood made another suicidal Confederate assault against an entrenched force under John M. Schofield, losing 6,252 men to Schofield’s 2,326. When Schofield pulled back to Nashville to join Thomas’s army, Hood pursued and nominally besieged the strongly

fortified city. In mid-December Thomas attacked and virtually annihilated Hood’s army, which by then numbered only 25,000 demoralized men.

As the 1865 campaigns began, northern morale was unshakable, Federals controlled the Shenandoah, Sherman’s march to the sea had bisected the Confederacy again, and one of the South’s two major field armies had been obliterated. Furthermore, in January Union forces captured Fort Fisher on the Cape Fear River, bottling up Wilmington, which had been the last blockade-running port. All that remained of the shriveled Confederacy was Lee’s army manning the Richmond-Petersburg trenches and a small army forming in North Carolina under Johnston, who was recalled to duty. Yet hardened rebels such as Davis and Lee were unwilling to quit. An indication of their determination and desperation was the South’s decision in March to arm its slaves. Aside from the question of whether blacks would fight for the South, the law authorizing black enlistments came too late to do any good. The final acts already unfolding were not heroic drama, but needless tragedy.

In early February Sherman resumed his campaign against the South’s resources and morale, heading north through the Carolinas. Though less well known than the march to the sea, the Carolinas trek was a more stunning accomplishment. The journey was longer, the terrain and weather were worse, and resistance was stiffer. Since the army burned “with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina,” the birthplace of secession, the devastation was greater and more vindictively inflicted than in Georgia. On February 17 the army entered Columbia, causing the Confederates to evacuate Charleston, since the Federals had severed its communications to the interior. A month later the combatants fought the campaign’s one large battle at Bentonville. Johnston tried to rout Sherman’s left wing but failed, and on March 23 the Yankees entered Goldsboro, where they found Schofield’s corps, which Grant had transferred from Tennessee, awaiting them. Although Sherman refitted for an advance against Lee’s rear, it was unnecessary, for Grant drove the Army of Northern Virginia from its trenches and forced it to capitulate.

During the winter Grant undertook no major offensives, letting disease and desertion weaken Lee’s army. Lee’s only hope was to unite with Johnston, for combined they might push back Sherman, then turn on Grant. To make Grant contract his left flank and thereby open an escape

hatch, on March 25 Lee struck at Fort Stedman in the Union center. Disastrous failure followed initial success, and Grant seized the initiative, massing Sheridan’s cavalry and 43,000 infantry against 11,000 Confederates at Five Forks on Lee’s extreme right. When the Federals routed the rebels on April 1, Grant ordered an attack against the Petersburg line on April 2, which overran long stretches of Confederate trenches. That night Lee abandoned Richmond and retreated westward, with Sheridan and several infantry corps in pursuit. Sheridan got in front of Lee’s dwindling band on April 8, and after an unsuccessful breakout attempt on the 9th Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House. Like the Army of Tennessee, the Army of Northern Virginia had been practically annihilated. Offering rations for Lee’s starving army, Grant asked if 25,000 would be enough. “Plenty; plenty; an abundance,” replied Lee, for he had fewer than 8,000 effectives.

Recalling the night of April 9, a Union cavalryman wrote that the “thought that I was certain, yes, certain of having a quiet night, the idea of security, was ineffable.” All over the South, men soon experienced the same sense of relief, for by late May all other Confederate armies had surrendered. The immediate fears of neither the South nor the North came true. Southerners thought the victors might engage in mass reprisals, but no postwar bloodletting occurred. Grant, Sherman, and others worried that Confederates would form guerrilla bands and continue fighting, but this did not happen either. Many southern officers advised against it. No place existed for guerrillas to use as bases, since the North occupied much of the South, and Unionists and deserters ruled the mountains and swamps. Partisan bands would get little sympathy from the population, whose morale had cracked long before the army’s. Finally, the average soldier was sick of war. The troops knew better than anyone that by force majeure the North had crushed the Confederacy.

The Final Reckoning

In Margaret Mitchell’s famous novel Gone With the Wind, heroine Scarlett O’Hara’s first husband, Charles Hamilton, rushes off to war in 1861 with romantic visions of glory. In less than two months he is dead— from measles followed by pneumonia. While hardly heroic, Charles’s

death was typical, since twice as many soldiers died from disease as from battle. Diseases swept through regiments in two waves. Shortly after a unit assembled, infectious childhood diseases such as measles and mumps thinned the ranks. Those who survived this wave then endured the camp diseases, primarily dysentery, malaria, and typhoid fever. Since these often occurred in epidemics, leading to unexpected reductions in fighting force, camp diseases were of great military significance.

The number of battle casualties was enormous, even though the theoretical long-range killing power of rifled weapons rarely came into play. Two significant factors limited the rifle’s impact. One was that few troops received training in estimating ranges, setting rifle sights, and firing live ammunition. Yet such practice was essential if a soldier hoped to hit a target—especially one that was moving—at more than a hundred yards. To counter both the minie ball’s low velocity and gravity’s tug at that distance, a shot would have to be aimed well above the target and come plunging down at a steep angle. If a rifleman aimed at the target, the bullet would plow into the ground well short of the intended victim. The second limiting factor was that many battles occurred in places like Chickamauga and the Wilderness, where the rugged terrain and dense foliage greatly reduced the killing range because combatants could not see each other at more than a few dozen yards’ distance. Only in a few engagements such as Pickett’s Charge, when a massed force advanced over a long expanse of relatively open ground, did rifled firepower and artillery quickly inflict fearsome losses.

Unlike Pickett’s Charge, most battles rapidly degenerated into prolonged firefights between two “entrenched” forces, which were often so close to each other that old-fashioned smoothbores would have been just about as effective as rifles. The close-order ranks that an attacking army used so that soldiers could hear or see their officers giving orders rarely survived the opening moments of combat. Traversing stream-laced, heavily forested, steep terrain in tight formations was impossible. And the first few shots frequently impelled the attackers to take cover, since they invariably confronted defenders who enjoyed both the physical and psychological advantages of being protected by entrenchments and field fortifications. “The truth is,” wrote one soldier, “when bullets are whacking against tree-trunks and solid shot are cracking skulls like egg-

shells, the consuming passion in the breast of the average man is to get out of the way.” But how? Fear of death or injury told a soldier he should not go forward; fear of being considered a coward restrained him from retreating. So an attacking force simply stopped, with each soldier seeking safety behind a nearby fence, rock, or tree stump or else digging a shallow, sheltering hole. Casualties accumulated slowly because the soldiers on both sides were dug in, but the final toll could be quite large, since these slugging matches often lasted for hours.

For attackers and defenders, losers and winners, a battlefield was a melancholy scene. Hundreds of men would be blasted into shapeless masses of pulpy gore. In warm weather the bodies and parts of bodies bloated, turned black, and putrefied rapidly, filling the air with a pungent stench. Though the guns might be still, the battlefield remained noisy with the anguish of the wounded. Perhaps the most chilling description came from Joshua Chamberlain, commander of the 20th Maine Volunteers, regarding the night of December 13–14 at Fredericksburg:

But out of that silence from the battle’s crash and roar rose new sounds more appalling still; rose or fell, you knew not which, or whether from the earth or air; a strange ventriloquism, of which you could not locate the source, a smothered moan that seemed to come from distances beyond the reach of the natural sense, a wail so far and deep and wide, as if a thousand discords were flowing together into a key-note weird, unearthly, terrible to hear and bear, yet startling with its nearness; the writhing concord broken by cries for help, pierced by shrieks of paroxysm; some begging for a drop of water; some calling on God for pity; and some on friendly hands to finish what the enemy had so horribly begun; some with delirious, dreamy voices murmuring loved names, as if the dearest were bending over them; some gathering their last strength to fire a musket to call attention to them where they lay helpless and deserted; and underneath, all the time, that deep bass note from closed lips too hopeless or too heroic to articulate their agony.

And in the rear of each army the same grisly scene took place: temporary hospitals where bare-armed surgeons in blood-stained aprons

and with bloody instruments worked to save the gashed and dying, invariably creating a mound of amputated limbs, the slicing and sawing more often than not done without the benefit of anesthetics.

Using round figures that are educated estimates, total Civil War casualties for soldiers and sailors on both sides were 1,095,000. Of these, 640,000 were Federals: 112,000 killed or mortally wounded in action; 227,500 dead of disease; 277,500 wounded; and 23,000 dead from miscellaneous causes such as drowning, murder, execution, sunstroke, and suicide. The remaining 455,000 were Confederates: 94,000 killed or mortally wounded in action; 164,000 dead of diseases; 194,000 wounded; and at least 3,000 deaths from miscellaneous causes. To put these figures in perspective, American deaths in World War I, World War II, and Korea totaled 564,000, but still do not reach the Civil War total of 620,000.13

Although war involves killing, killing is not the object of war. Men fight for vital reasons, as defined by their country’s political leadership. The North fought for the preservation of the Union and the destruction of slavery, while the South fought for independence and the preservation of its “peculiar institution.” In saving the Union and freeing the slaves, Lincoln believed the North would be achieving goals of cosmic significance, transcending national boundaries into the infinite future. Like many of America’s leaders, he thought the United States had a special destiny to safeguard and foster its democratic institutions as an example for the world. The North, he said in December 1862, “shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best, hope of earth.” And in the Gettysburg Address he urged his fellow citizens to take increased resolve from the northern soldiers who had given “the last full measure of devotion” on the battlefield. Let us ensure “that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Those northerners who fell at Gettysburg and elsewhere did not die in vain, since the North achieved its dual war aims. The conflict delivered a deathblow to the doctrine of secession and considerably weakened (though it did not destroy) the idea of states’ rights. Within the American federal system, the balance of power shifted from the states to the national

government. People no longer said “the United States are” but instead “the United States is.” In the process of saving the Union, the North also destroyed slavery. Advancing Union armies and the Emancipation Proclamation undermined the institution, and the Thirteenth Amendment killed it.

Southerners had seemingly died in vain, since the Confederacy achieved neither of its war aims. And yet merely saying that the Union lived and slavery died left several crucial questions unanswered. What was the status of the defeated states? How and when were they to return to “their proper practical relation with the Union”? Who would control the restored states, former secessionists or southern Unionists, perhaps in league with the freedmen? And what was the status of the former slaves? Although pledged to black freedom, the North had not adopted a third war aim of equality, and between freedom and equality lay a vast middle ground. As solutions to these perplexing problems emerged during Reconstruction, southerners salvaged much that looked like victory from their apparent defeat. Former secessionists regained effective control over the former Confederate States and maintained unquestioned white supremacy. Furthermore, southerners soon took as much pride in the legend of the Lost Cause as northerners did in the fact of Appomattox. Ironically, even perversely, by 1877 both North and South could proclaim success. How and why the North lost so many of the fruits of victory is a complex story in which the Army played a central role.

EIGHT

From Postwar Demobilization Toward Great Power Status, 1865–1898

The weather on May 23 was beautiful for campaigning, and the Army of the Potomac was on the move. Under cloudless skies the soft spring sun glinted off the steel sabers and bayonets of 100,000 men. But this was May of 1865, the war was over, and the Union’s saviors were marching down Pennsylvania Avenue to the cheers of jubilant spectators. Meade’s cavalry stretched seven miles and took more than an hour to pass the reviewing stand. Marching twelve abreast, the general’s infantry consumed another five hours. The next day six corps from Sherman’s army repeated the performance, the rangy westerners swaggering past the crowds “like the lords of the world!”

Following the two-day victory festivities the Union military forces underwent a rapid demobilization. By November 1866, only 11,043 of the 1,034,064 volunteers in the service in May 1865 were still in uniform. As the volunteers departed, the regular Army remained. It temporarily benefited from lingering martial enthusiasm when, in July 1866, Congress authorized a peacetime strength of 54,302. Included in the table of organization were four black infantry regiments (reduced to two in 1869), two black cavalry regiments, and 1,000 Indian scouts. Although these black units and Indian scouts were an innovation in the peacetime Army, which historically had been composed exclusively of whites, they became a permanent feature of the postwar military establishment. However, Congress soon slashed the Army’s overall size, and by 1876 the maximum strength was 27,442.

The Navy also underwent drastic reduction. Within five years it declined from a wartime peak of about 700 ships to 52. By European standards most of the ships were obsolete, for they were made of wood, moved by sails, and carried muzzleloading smoothbores. The mobilization accompanying the Virginius crisis showed how far the Navy had deteriorated. After war broke out in Cuba in 1868, Virginius made repeated voyages to the island carrying contraband to the revolutionaries fighting against Spanish rule. Although it sailed under the U.S. flag, the Spanish captured the ship in October 1873 and executed approximately fifty crewmen and passengers, many of them Americans. The result was a war scare with Spain. The Navy concentrated all available ships at Key West, but the assembled fleet (about two dozen ships, only six of them ironclads) was feeble compared to that of any major naval power, and diplomacy soon eliminated the likelihood of war. In early 1874 the fleet held maneuvers, which were unimpressive. Logistical support was nil, gunnery training was inadequate, and the ships’ boilers were so decrepit that the fleet’s top speed was only 4.5 knots. The fleet, declared one newspaper, was “almost useless for military purposes” because the vessels belonged “to a class of ships which other governments have sold or are selling for firewood.”

Although Army and Navy officers naturally lamented the extent of the demobilization, the reductions actually made sense considering the nation’s relative security and the missions that American policymakers wanted the armed forces to undertake. As even Generals Sherman and Sheridan realized, an invasion was unlikely. No European nation had a navy capable of transporting and sustaining a substantial expeditionary force across the Atlantic. Continental rivalries restrained any of the great powers from making a significant New World military commitment, and America’s vast size and immense military potential made foreign conquest impossible. Geography and European balance-of-power considerations gave the United States virtually total security. Moreover, through the 1880s a foreign policy with limited goals required little mobilized military power.

The Postwar Navy

In the post–Civil War era the Navy and Army returned to their traditional missions in support of national policy. Two aspects of postwar policy particularly affected the Navy. First, since “continentalist” assumptions dominated thinking about the national interest into the 1880s, the United States did not need a large, modern navy. Lacking a desire to compete with Europeans in an imperialistic struggle, the nation needed no navy to challenge them. Defense of the continental domain dictated only a modest naval force that in wartime could raid enemy commerce and supplement the fortifications protecting the coast. Secretary of the Navy George M. Robeson correctly noted that the small and outdated postwar Navy was sufficient for the “defensive purposes of a peaceful people, without colonies, with a dangerous coast, and shallow harbors, separated from warlike naval powers” by the Atlantic.

Policy also required that the Navy protect lives and property abroad and, especially, foster trade by maintaining unimpeded access to foreign markets. Thus the Navy Department revived its prewar system of distant patrols. Although the European Squadron (successor to the old Mediterranean Squadron) had often been paramount in Navy planning, it declined in importance. Since European navies ensured stability in the Mediterranean, the United States made its major naval commitment to Latin America and Asia, where chronic instability provided ample opportunity for “gunboat diplomacy.” The Navy suppressed piracy, transported diplomats, stopped vessels flying the American flag to verify their nationality, provided a haven for missionaries threatened by “savages,” evacuated citizens endangered by war or epidemic diseases, and dispatched landing parties to deal with recalcitrant “barbarous tribes.” On numerous occasions marines and sailors went ashore to protect American merchants, investments, and strategic interests in Asia and in South and Central America. Naval officers also continued a diplomatic-commercial role, in the image of Matthew C. Perry. For example, in 1882 Commodore Robert W. Shufeldt negotiated the first treaty between Korea and a Western nation. Officers performed these missions partly to achieve personal glory and to preserve national “honor,” but they also shared the policymakers’ belief that expanding commerce and the nation’s welfare were inseparable.

The Navy’s deployment on distant stations required a return to wooden sailing ships. Advances in armor, rifled guns, and marine engines appeared with dizzying rapidity, but the debt-ridden U.S. government was not inclined to expensive naval experiments. Prolonged voyages could not be made with steam-powered vessels. Since even engineers did not perfectly understand thermodynamics, costly steam engines remained inefficient and consumed enormous amounts of expensive coal. Ships could not carry much coal and still have room for the crew and supplies. Although European navies could refuel at their colonial stations, the United States had few such bases. Finally, obsolete ships were sufficient to intimidate most Asians and Latin Americans, who were even less well armed.

Reinforcing these technological, financial, and military imperatives were sociological and psychological factors. The struggle between staff and line officers raged with new intensity, and steam symbolized the conflict. Believing they had made a substantial contribution to Union victory and that steamships would rule the oceans, engineers demanded equal rank with line officers. Considering the extreme flux in naval technology, engineers often uncritically hailed innovations in steam engineering to enhance their position. But line officers were not eager to share their authority aboard ships, and they opposed steam to assure their own prominence. Still, they were not blind reactionaries; most realized that ultimately steam would replace sails. They also understood an important political and strategic factor: National policy made steam ironclads temporarily unnecessary. Line officers prevailed, and in 1869 Vice Admiral David D. Porter, acting in the secretary of the navy’s name, ordered that all vessels “be fitted out with full-sail power” and that ships’ commanders justify any use of auxiliary steam power. He also dismissed Benjamin F. Isherwood, the chief of the Bureau of Steam Engineering, and reduced the relative rank of other engineers.

The Frontier “Constabulary”

After a hasty post–Civil War concentration in Texas to help convince the French to withdraw from Mexico, the Army, like the Navy, resumed its traditional tasks. Taking advantage of America’s domestic war, French

Emperor Napoleon III had established the Archduke Maximilian of Austria as the Emperor of Mexico in 1864 and supported him with an army. The Union ineffectually responded with diplomatic protests against this violation of the Monroe Doctrine. When the Civil War ended, the government dispatched General Schofield to Paris to demand withdrawal, and, before the volunteer armies dissolved, 52,000 troops mobilized in Texas to buttress the demand. Faced with continuing guerrilla warfare in Mexico, with fear of Prussian ambitions in Europe, and with the military might of a reunited United States, Napoleon withdrew in 1867.

With the continent saved from monarchy and the volunteers returned to their homes, the regulars aided the nation’s territorial and economic growth, manned the coastal forts, and fought Indians. The Army protected railroad construction crews, opened new roads, charted unexplored regions, briefly occupied Alaska, and improved rivers and harbors. The coast artillery stood guard in old masonry forts that rifled guns had made obsolete. The War Department planned a postwar program of earth, brick, and concrete barbette batteries, but reduced funding, and the relentless technical advances in artillery, soon killed the program. Given the country’s security, why waste money on unnecessary defenses?

Regulars redeploying to the west found Indian wars engulfing the Great Plains. When the regulars marched eastward in 1861, western state and territorial militia and volunteers assumed the frontier constabulary mission. Indian-white conflict actually intensified, since citizen-soldiers were often extremely brutal toward both hostile and friendly Indians. Violence first flared in August 1862 with an uprising among the Santee Sioux of Minnesota, who had endured years of insults, greed, and deceit from whites. Erroneously believing that Confederate agents had provoked the outbreak, the Lincoln administration dispatched General Pope, fresh from his humiliation at Second Bull Run, to the scene. But Pope was no more successful against the Indians than he had been against Lee. The war spread westward into the Dakota and Montana Territories, engulfing all the powerful Sioux tribes, and merged with other conflicts that flared across the prairies farther south. The situation in the west became so critical that the Union had to divert troops, including six regiments composed of former Confederate soldiers, from the major battlefields east

of the Mississippi. The worst incidents occurred in 1863 at the “Battle” of Bear River, near the present-day Utah-Idaho border, and in 1864 at the “Battle” of Sand Creek. California volunteers launched a near-dawn surprise attack on Chief Bear Hunter’s Shoshone village camped along Bear River, killing approximately 250 men, women, and children. At Sand Creek, Colorado volunteers attacked Black Kettle’s Southern Cheyenne village. An advocate of peace, Black Kettle raised American and white flags over his tepee, but this did not prevent the whites from massacring 200 Cheyennes, mostly women and children. As one observer wrote, the Indians “were scalped, their brains knocked out; the men used their knives, ripped open women, clubbed little children, knocked them in the head with their guns, beat their brains out, mutilated their bodies in every sense of the word.”

The government signed a series of Indian treaties in 1865, blanketing the West in temporary peace. But gold and silver strikes, the Homestead Act, and railroad construction quickened the pace of settlement even during the Civil War. The idea of a permanent Indian frontier died under the deluge of land-hungry and gold-seeking whites, so the government devised a policy of concentrating the Indians on reservations, usually in areas that whites did not covet—at least immediately. The reservation system combined blatant greed and misguided philanthropy. Confined to unwanted land, the thinking went, the Indians would not interfere with white settlement. Denied their nomadic lifestyle, they could be “civilized”—taught the white man’s language, turned into sedentary agriculturalists, and Christianized. The policy’s flaw was that many tribes or tribal factions hated reservation life and rebelled against it. Then the Army had to force compliance.

The Army’s task was thankless and difficult. One problem was white society’s ambivalence about Indians. The opinions of frontiersmen and eastern humanitarians highlighted the ambiguity. “There are two classes of people,” Sherman wrote, “one demanding the utter extinction of the Indians, and the other full of love for their conversion to civilization and Christianity. Unfortunately the army stands between them and gets the cuff from both sides.” If the Army killed too many Indians, humanitarians cried “Butchery!” But if it killed too few, frontiersmen scorned the troops as cowards. Yet philanthropists demanded the forced acculturation that

drove Indians onto the warpath, and westerners demanding “protection” often provoked violence by insisting that Indians move to smaller reservations.

Reflecting society, Army officers were often ambivalent about fighting for “civilization” against the “savages.” Many of them despised pontificating humanitarians, disliked rapacious frontiersmen, and lamented their government’s record of broken treaties. They viewed some aspects of Indian behavior (torturing captives and mutilating the dead) with revulsion. Yet they found much about the Indians commendable and commiserated with their fate. They lauded the Indians’ fighting abilities. Such praise served professional and psychic needs, since the Indians’ superb skills justified the Army’s frequent failures, but many officers genuinely admired the Indians as warriors. They also praised the Indians’ defiant fight for freedom. “We took away their country and their means of support, broke up their mode of living, their habits of life, introduced disease and decay among them and it was for this and against this they made war,” wrote Sheridan. “Could anyone expect less?” Holding such sentiments, many officers preferred negotiations to bloodshed and took an active interest in Indian welfare. However, officers fulfilled national policy, insisting that Indians stay on their reservations and fighting them when they did not.

Divided responsibility for Indian affairs was another difficulty. The Interior Department’s Bureau of Indian Affairs administered the reservation system, but the War Department enforced it, leading to confusion over the respective roles of civil and military officials. The government never imposed a clear solution to this problem, but the Army inevitably assumed increased authority because of Indian resistance. “Peace by kindness” could not make them accept the reservations.

It did not help that the Army campaigned at the outer rim of the American empire; projecting military power at an empire’s edge is never easy. In the hostile western environment, the small number of troops and their inadequate training and weapons were severe handicaps. Extremes in topography, drought, cold, and vast distances made campaigning an ordeal. The lack of navigable rivers and the rugged terrain created logistical problems that the extension of the railroads only partially eased. The Army relied on wagons, horses, and mules, but boulders and gullies

shattered axles and wheels, forage was scarce, and animals collapsed from hard usage. Always too few to police the west properly, regulars were often poorly trained and armed. Based on European-style tactical manuals, what little training they received left them ill-prepared to fight an unconventional foe who sometimes had superior shoulder arms. In 1873 the Army adopted the single-shot, breechloading, black-powder Springfield rifle. Not until 1892, when the Indian campaigns were over, did it adopt a repeating rifle, the smokeless-powder Krag-Jorgensen. Long before then some Indians had acquired repeaters, especially Winchesters. Whether armed with repeaters or bows, the Indians were worthy adversaries. In the east Indians moved on foot, but in the west they rode ponies, giving them greater mobility. With no towns to defend, no encumbering supply trains, and an uncanny ability to live off the land, the western Indians were adept at guerrilla warfare. Relying on stealth and ambushes, they appeared to be everywhere without being anywhere and generally refused to engage in pitched battles. On those few occasions when they did stand and fight, the Army had its hands full.

The factors that shaped colonial Indian wars, and the subsequent two centuries of native-white conflict, still prevailed. First, microbes continued to inflict a biological catastrophe, killing far more Indians than bullets did and thereby eroding their ability to resist. Since diseases were recurring— in the northern Plains an epidemic occurred about every six years in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries—a tribe barely recovered from one epidemic before a new wave of death and anguish swept over it. The Comanche population, for example, peaked at 40,000 in the 1770s but, ravaged by periodic outbreaks of smallpox and cholera, dwindled to no more than 10,000 by the 1850s. Second, whites retained an advantage in their superior discipline and organization. While Native Americans were excellent strategists and tacticians, they primarily relied on transitory cooperation among tribes and tribal factions to achieve their goals. On the other hand, the Army’s high command planned comparatively far ahead and campaigned relentlessly. Third, the primary problem was making the Indians stand and fight. The Army utilized converging columns, sending several forces into an area simultaneously, which occasionally forced the Indians into battle. Although the columns invited defeat in detail, officers assumed they would not encounter a large enemy force. The grass and

game in any one region would normally not support substantial Indian concentrations.

A fourth theme was that to achieve decisive results, whites had to wage ruthless total war against the Indians’ fixed camps. Since Indians dispersed into hunting and war parties during the summer, this often required winter campaigns. When the regulars found a winter encampment, the occupants were doomed. The Army invariably surprised the Indians, who were notorious for their lax security and thus could not put up a successful defense. The elements, the grass-fed ponies’ weakened condition, and the presence of women and children made escape difficult. If the Indians fled, the Army destroyed their shelter and food supplies, leading to death from starvation and exposure.

Finally, the Army compensated for its weaknesses by the time-honored method of employing friendly Indians. At times the Army linked a tribe to a fort, forming a symbiotic military colony. The Tonkawas at Fort Griffin, Texas, and the Northern Cheyennes at Fort Keogh, Montana, were examples of this. Friendly Indians represented at least half the Army’s strength in some encounters, and in a few instances the only U.S. soldiers engaged with the enemy were Indian allies. A general estimated that one Indian scout unit was more valuable than six cavalry companies. Yet many officers hesitated to rely on Indians. Within the context of American-style war they were not good soldiers, lacking discipline and refusing to sacrifice themselves in mini-Gettysburgs. Doubts lingered about their loyalty, though scouts turned on white soldiers only once, at the Battle of Cibicu Creek in 1881. Depending on Indians reflected badly on the Army, tainting the regulars’ prestige. But the most successful officers utilized Indian allies.

For three centuries the conflict between whites and Native Americans followed the course of white settlement, which is why the final campaigns occurred on the Great Plains and in the intermountain west rather than the west coast. The tide of white settlement flowed steadily westward to the Mississippi, then inched across that mighty waterway to form a belt of well-watered states running from Minnesota to Louisiana. From there the Americans jumped across the west’s interior and settled in California and Oregon. Only as the Civil War came to an end and in the succeeding

quarter century did they backfill the Great Plains and intermountain west, and they did so by approaching from both the east and west.

The Indian “wars” between 1866 and 1890 consisted of little more than pursuits and skirmishes; only an occasional incident involved enough men to classify it as a “battle.” Conflict flared intermittently in three zones. The regulars’ nemesis in the arid southwest was the Apaches. In the Rocky Mountains and the northwest, the foremost adversaries were Utes, Bannocks, Sheepeaters, Paiutes, Shoshones, Modocs, and Nez Perce. And on the Plains the Army fought Comanches, Cheyennes, Arapahos, Kiowas, and, especially, Sioux.

The most deadly conflict in the final stage of the Native Americans’ defeat throughout the continental U.S. was the so-called Snake War, a dreary, sputtering guerrilla conflict against Shoshones, Northern Paiutes, and Bannocks (whites collectively referred to these groups as “Snakes”) who roamed the Great Basin where Oregon, Idaho, and Nevada converge. Lasting from 1864 to 1868, the war claimed 378 soldiers, civilians, and Indian scouts, while 1,254 Indians died or were wounded. Although the Snake War was the deadliest, the Great Sioux War was the most famous, even though it had only about half the Snake War’s total casualties. Among the Army’s approximately 950 engagements in the post–Civil War West, the best known, by far, occurred during the Great Sioux War: The Battle of the Little Bighorn (known to the Indians as the Battle of the Greasy Grass), where the Sioux, reinforced by Northern Cheyenne and Northern Arapaho allies, defeated George A. Custer’s 7th Cavalry.

Conquering the Sioux was not easy because they were stronger than many other tribes. Not only did their nomadic lifestyle protect them from the worst ravages of the epidemics that swept the Great Plains, but the government had also inoculated some Sioux bands against smallpox in 1832. Fortunately for the whites, the Sioux had been such aggressive expansionists that they alienated many weaker tribes; before the Great Sioux War ended, Crows, Assiniboines, Shoshones, Arikaras, Pawnees, Utes, and Bannocks fought for the Americans. Moreover, by the early 1870s the Sioux and their Northern Cheyenne allies had purposefully shifted from an offensive to a defensive strategy. They would no longer attack whites outside the region between the Yellowstone River and the

Black Hills, but they would do all they could to defend themselves if the whites invaded that area. In order to put up the most effectual defense, they tinkered with new forms of centralized command to overcome the factionalism that so often sundered tribes. Sitting Bull became the foremost chief, with Gall and Crazy Horse his foremost subordinates. Perfect unity among the Sioux remained impossible to achieve, but strategic thinking underlay the effort.

The Custer fight demonstrated most of the themes of Indian warfare but also had unique features. Provoked by treaty violations and angered by efforts to confine them to reservations, large numbers of reservation Sioux joined the so-called “hunting bands” of Sitting Bull, which had never been on a reservation. In 1876 Sheridan planned an expedition of three converging columns to force all of the Sioux onto their reservation. Commanding more than 1,000 troops and 262 Crow and Shoshone allies, George Crook marched north from Fort Fetterman. John Gibbon with 450 soldiers and 25 Crow auxiliaries moved east from Forts Shaw and Ellis. Westward from Fort Abraham Lincoln came Alfred H. Terry leading 925 soldiers, including the 7th Cavalry, and 40 Arikara scouts. The commanders directed their attention to catching the enemy, giving little thought to then defeating him, since each column could deal with more warriors than anyone expected to fight in any single encounter. However, the Indians were concentrated in unprecedented numbers, perhaps 1,000 lodges (wigwams) in all, which meant about 2,000 warriors. They had no intention of fleeing, and many carried repeaters. They attacked Crook’s column on June 17 at the Battle of the Rosebud, where fighting raged for six hours, with Crook’s Indian allies repeatedly saving his position from being overrun. The battle badly mauled Crook’s command and forced it to retreat.

Unaware of the Indians’ uncommon determination and of Crook’s repulse, Gibbon, Terry, and Custer planned to trap the Indians in the Little Bighorn Valley. Custer would ascend the Rosebud, cross to the Little Bighorn, and descend it. Gibbon and Terry would go up the Bighorn River and assume a blocking position at the Little Bighorn’s mouth, bottling up the enemy. As soon as either force encountered Indians, it should give battle to prevent them from escaping. Custer declined to take a Gatling gun platoon, which would limit his mobility,

and refused 2d Cavalry reinforcements, believing that he could “whip all the Indians on the Continent with the Seventh Cavalry.”

Approaching the Little Bighorn on June 25, the day before Gibbon and Terry could be in position, Custer fragmented his regiment into four battalions. He sent Captain Frederick W. Benteen off to the south with three companies to ensure the Indians did not flee in that direction. Locating a village, he ordered Major Marcus A. Reno’s three-company battalion to charge it immediately, perhaps assuming the Indians were surprised. Directly commanding five companies, Custer moved to the north, and one company stayed to the rear with the pack train. But instead of running, the Indians attacked, forcing Reno to withdraw and dig in and wiping out Custer’s battalion. Reinforced by Benteen and the pack train, Reno held out until the Gibbon-Terry column arrived on the 27th. The post-battle reactions of Indians and whites showed much about their respective warmaking abilities. The Indians were unable to sustain collective action, drifting apart into bands to celebrate, hunt buffalo, and find fresh grass for their ponies. But the Army poured troops into Sioux country by rail, steamer, foot, and horse. Crook and Nelson A. Miles, aided by Indian spies and scouts, spearheaded a winter campaign that ferreted out enemy camps and virtually ended Indian resistance.

Although the Army’s role in subduing the Indians should not be minimized, other factors were perhaps more important. By 1890 railroads crisscrossed the west, bringing new settlers. In 1866 fewer than 2 million whites lived in the west; twenty-five years later there were 8.5 million, planting crops, raising cattle, and depleting the timber, grass, and game that sustained Indian society. For the Plains Indians the buffalo’s destruction was especially harmful, for they depended on its hide and meat for almost every want. By the late 1880s commercial hunters had reduced the buffalo herds from 13 million to a thousand, and Sheridan believed that did more than the Army to pacify the Indians. In other regions of the west, white settlement and activity also severely reduced other types of game. The frontier was gone, and Indians had nowhere to go but the reservations.

The conquest of the Indians ended an era in the Army’s history. Indian fighting had been its primary function since the formation of the 1st American Regiment. Now the Army no longer needed to remain in the

far-flung garrisons, and consolidation took place rapidly. By 1891 the Army had abandoned one-fourth of the posts occupied in 1889. Even before the troops settled into their fewer, more permanent installations, officers began debating a disturbing question: What was the Army’s purpose now that its foremost traditional mission was gone?

The Army and Reconstruction

“Of the slain there were enough to furnish forth a battlefield . . . all killed with deliberation,” wrote Albion W Tourgee in his 1879 novel A Fool’s Errand, “shot, stabbed, hanged, drowned, mutilated beyond description, tortured beyond conception.” Tourgee was not describing a frontier massacre. Having been a Republican judge during Reconstruction, he was explaining the fate of many blacks and their white political allies. Allowing for literary license, the judge told the truth. Appomattox was only a truce that ushered in two years of nominal peace before the south renewed the conflict at a guerrilla level. President Grant refought many of the men he had already defeated once and whose purpose had been little changed by Lee’s surrender. Confederate veterans dominated the irregular warfare between 1867 and 1877, continuing the struggle against federal authority in order to preserve white supremacy and regional political powers. The renewed war forced the Army to participate in low-intensity military operations and to assume an untraditional duty. Garrisoning the south during Reconstruction was a deviation from its customary apolitical role.

During the Civil War the Army became involved in developing loyal governments in the seceded states and working out the freedmen’s place in society. Lincoln appointed military governors with civil and military powers for occupied states, hoping they could mobilize loyal electorates, and Army officers initiated educational and free labor programs for exslaves. To support the Army’s work with blacks, in March 1865 Congress created the Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands (Freedmen’s Bureau) in the War Department. Staffed primarily by Army personnel, the bureau represented a unique social welfare experiment and an unprecedented extension of federal power into the

states, since it had authority over the economic, legal, and political affairs of the former slaves.

Northerners assumed that martial law and the military’s role in the south would end in 1865. They expected southerners to acknowledge defeat by treating blacks justly, rejecting Confederate leaders, and embracing southern Unionists. None of these things happened. Encouraged by President Andrew Johnson’s Reconstruction policy, which imposed no severe penalties on the south, unrepentant southerners elected former Confederates to state, local, and national offices, formed militia units composed of exsoldiers, passed “black codes” restricting the freedmen’s rights, slaughtered blacks in race riots, refused to ratify the Fourteenth Amendment, and bullied loyalists. Most important from the Army’s viewpoint, southerners frequently insulted and sometimes assaulted soldiers and filed scores of damage suits in state courts against federal military personnel. In these suits claimants asked for damages for actions that the soldiers had taken under martial law during and after the war. Since the claimants, judges, and jurors were inevitably former rebels, the courts were unsympathetic to the defendants. Army personnel, whose legal status in the south from 1865 to early 1867 was ambiguous, were reluctant to exercise authority under martial law or support the Freedmen’s Bureau for fear of provoking damage suits.

The problem of protecting the Army from vengeful southerners and establishing its legal position was one of the main factors that drove a wedge between Johnson, on the one hand, and Congress, Secretary of War Stanton, and Commanding General Grant, on the other. Johnson’s position, expressed in proclamations issued in April and August of 1866, was that the rebellion was over, the southern states were restored to the Union under his lenient policy, and the civil authority was ascendant over the military. He wanted the Army out of the reconstructed states since, he said, “standing armies, military occupation, martial law, military tribunals, and the suspension of the writ of habeas corpus are in time of peace dangerous to public liberty” and incompatible with free institutions. In the Milligan, Garland, and Cummings decisions, the Supreme Court agreed with him that continued martial law was unconstitutional. But from the perspective of the Army and a growing number of Republican congressmen, if prevailing conditions did not change, the wartime

sacrifices would have been in vain, for only loyal people would suffer any penalties.

Rather than see Appomattox reversed, Army personnel and white Unionists suffer further abuse, and blacks returned to virtual slavery, Stanton and Grant defied the president and turned to Congress for help, resulting in an alliance between the Army and Congress that wrested Reconstruction policy from Johnson’s hands. In 1866 Grant, with Stanton’s concurrence, issued orders permitting military personnel who believed the south’s civil courts denied them justice to have suits transferred to federal courts or the Freedmen’s Bureau’s tribunals. He also issued a secret circular urging commanders to act discreetly but authorizing them to employ martial law when necessary despite Johnson’s proclamations. Congress further protected the Army by amending the 1863 Habeas Corpus Act to provide for federal jurisdiction in suits against soldiers and to assist the defendants with government legal aid.

Laws passed in March 1867 signaled a complete victory for the Congress-Army alliance over the president and in essence established a separate army for Reconstruction duty. The Command of the Army Act and the Tenure of Office Act kept Grant and Stanton in their positions and enhanced the commanding general’s authority over the entire Army. Although frontier garrisons remained under executive control and the precise extent of the president’s loss of authority over the occupation forces remains subject to debate, Grant and Stanton, acting in concert with Congress, were the dominant voices affecting the Army in the south. To prevent organized resistance, Congress disbanded southern militia units and prohibited new ones from being raised without its approval.

Finally, Congress passed the First Reconstruction Act setting forth its own policy. The act legalized Army occupation, reinstated martial law, and divided the south into five military districts, each commanded by a general. The Army became a political instrument, a role that it did not relish but undertook as a means of self-preservation. Under the act the Army had the power to remove and appoint officials, register voters, hold elections, regulate court proceedings, and approve state constitutions. Grant interpreted the law to mean that commanders had “entire control over the civil governments” and were not responsible to any United States civil officer, and Congress agreed. Thus a general’s political inclinations

were important. A few lacked zeal for the goals of congressional Reconstruction and worked with Conservatives (Democrats) to limit its impact. But others favored the Republican Party, and their tutelage fostered Radical Republican governments. By 1871 Congress had readmitted most of the states, Conservative or Republican. After a state’s restoration military rule ended and civil government began. However, southerners so detested most of the new regimes that, having created Republican governments, the Army had to help defend them.

White racists considered three organizations besides the Army provocative. Although the Freedmen’s Bureau helped plantation owners by keeping blacks tied to the land as agrarian laborers, it also enhanced the freedmen’s political and civil rights. The Union League, a northern patriotic society, spread to the south, where freedmen comprised the bulk of its membership and its main purpose was to mobilize black voters. To provide for local protection, most of the governments received congressional permission to raise militias. Composed of both blacks and white Unionists, the militias undertook general police and specific election duties, ensuring that freedmen voted and that ineligible former rebels did not. Paradoxically, the militias weakened rather than strengthened the Republicans. Congress used their formation as a pretext to reduce the Army, and the sight of armed black men intensified the white southerners’ reaction to Republican rule.

The southerners’ violent answer to Reconstruction was the Ku Klux Klan. Begun as a social fraternity in Tennessee, that state’s leaders made it into a paramilitary arm of the Conservative Party. The Klan spread to every state between the Potomac and the Rio Grande and spawned a host of similar organizations, such as the Knights of the Rising Sun and the Knights of the White Camellia. Manned by undemocratic Democrats and racist reactionaries, the terrorist groups beat, whipped, raped, and murdered lone blacks and white Republicans, especially those active in the Freedmen’s Bureau, Union League, and militias. Many incidents were simple brutality. But the violence also served a counterrevolutionary purpose, undermining the reconstructed governments by inducing some Republicans to leave the South and assassinating and intimidating others. Wherever the terrorists were active, Republican voting drastically declined.

“The Ku Klux organization is so extensive, and so well organized and armed, that it is beyond the power of any one to exert any moral influence over them,” wrote a general serving in Tennessee. “Powder and ball is the only thing that will put them down.” But who would supply the powder and ball? The reign of terror was so extensive that state governments were powerless to control it. Only the national government and its Army had the resources to quell the south’s challenge to federal policy. Most Army officers were willing to engage the rebels again—even those who sympathized with southern goals deplored the lawless terrorists—and whenever the beleaguered state governments requested aid, they responded as best they could. But severe problems hampered the Army’s war against the Klan. Too few regulars were available. In 1868 only 17,657 men were on occupation duty, and three years later the number was only 8,038. While numbers are not necessarily an indication of power, the Army was nevertheless too small to quash the violence. Constitutional and legal safeguards against military power also restricted the Army. When Congress readmitted a state, the Army could intervene only upon the application of, and in subordination to, state civil authorities. These officials, either afraid of or in sympathy with the terrorists, often inhibited effective action. Moreover, even when officials called upon the Army to assist in enforcing the law, its legal authority was as murky as it had been in 1865–1867. Thus officers facing a delicate political situation often hesitated to act decisively.

Perhaps the most fundamental problem was the north’s flagging determination. Representing a minority in each southern state and utterly dependent on federal support, were the Republican governments worth saving? Increasing numbers of northerners thought not, and erstwhile backers of congressional policy gradually retreated. An important test between northern resolve and southern resistance came in the early 1870s, when Congress passed the Enforcement Acts. The most important one, called the Ku Klux Klan Act, outlawed the Klan and similar groups, permitted President Grant to declare martial law and suspend the writ of habeas corpus, and gave federal officials and troops unprecedented authority of enforcement. However, the enforcement record in the south was pitiable, and by 1874 the program retained little vitality. In nine South Carolina counties, where Grant for the first and only time suspended the

writ of habeas corpus, the act did achieve measurable success and demonstrated what might have been achieved. The commander there, Major Lewis M. Merrill, deployed the 7th Cavalry so effectively that he broke the Klan’s grip on the state. But South Carolina was the exception.

Despite the Enforcement Acts, not because of them, the Klan’s activity declined as it lost the community support essential for irregular operations. The grosser Klan outrages repelled simple humanity, and the exile and demoralization of the black labor force hurt the economy. More important, Democratic leaders, unable to control the Klan, could not mobilize it to help them win elections. With the KKK, violence spawned violence, all too often unharnessed to political purpose.

But southerners did not give up their war for white supremacy and home rule. The north’s obvious desire for peace and its growing indifference to the fate of southern Republicans encouraged Democrats to act boldly. In the mid-1870s a new white terror arose to “redeem” those states still under Republican rule. Openly directed by Democratic leaders, such well-armed organizations as the White League of Louisiana and the Red Shirts of South Carolina were essentially Conservative militias formed to counter Republican militias. Although relying heavily on economic pressure and threats, which were unlikely to provoke federal intervention, they resorted to violence when it served political purposes. Democrats planned race riots and battled Republican militias prior to elections, in time to keep Republicans from the polls but too late for Washington to send regulars to police the voting. What occurred between 1874 and 1877 was not indiscriminate Klan-style violence, but a calculated insurrection as the last unredeemed states fell to Democrats.

One unexpected result of Reconstruction was the difficulty in enacting legislation to reform and modernize the armed forces. The Democratic triumph in the south led to a reunited national Democratic Party. Based on its experiences between 1861 and 1877, it became an antimilitary party, giving new birth to the attitudes of the Jeffersonian and Jacksonian eras. For the next generation congressional Democrats, especially those from the south, generally opposed forward-looking military legislation. At times Democratic intransigence threatened the Army’s operational ability. For example, in 1877 Congress appropriated no money for the Army until November 30, forcing soldiers to rely on loans from bankers, who were

often usurious. Frequently joining the antireformist Democrats were the War Department’s bureau chiefs, whose political power had been enhanced during Reconstruction. With the Army responsive to Congress’s direction, the chiefs exerted even greater independence from their traditional superior, the secretary of war, and developed closer ties to Congress, thus gaining political leverage in fighting line-sponsored reforms.

In 1865 Sherman predicted that “no matter what change we may desire in the feelings and thoughts of people [in the] South, we cannot accomplish it by force. Nor can we afford to maintain there an army large enough to hold them in subjugation.” He was right. Force failed to transform southerners. But northern public opinion never permitted the use of much force. A massive, sustained intervention might have produced more favorable results. But budgetary restraints, fear of standing armies, and concern for the consent of the governed (as long as they were white) prevented a significant commitment of indefinite duration. By 1877 the north was so anxious for sectional reconciliation that it gave up the effort to preserve the gains of 1865. It had won the conventional war but lost the unconventional war of 1867–1877. White supremacy prevailed, and the south’s wartime leaders dominated a distinct section within the United States. As one man wrote in 1877, “Status quo ante bellum or things as they were before Lincoln, slavery excepted: such is the tendency everywhere.” True, formal slavery died, but whites imposed informal servitude on blacks, making them the most cruelly deceived of all by Appomattox. The north got peace in 1877, but the peace lacked justice.

The Army’s duty in the south was onerous. Subjected to political crossfires, it turned in a performance that seemingly pleased no one, north or south. Radicals argued that it did too little to support the congressional program, while Conservatives complained that it did too much. As the Army redeployed, most men were probably glad to leave the south. Avenging Custer or chasing the Nez Perce would surely be more satisfying (if also more deadly) than playing a thankless political and civil role. But the Army was about to march into another civil-military cauldron, for in 1877 a nationwide labor strike rocked the government, which ordered the Army to undertake another untraditional task: policing labor strikes.

The Army and Strikebreaking

In the last half of the century American society underwent rapid change. Immigration threatened its identity, urban growth compromised its agrarian past, and the rise of corporate capitalism altered the relationship between management and labor. Hard hit by recurrent depressions and stressing the rights and needs of individuals, laborers went on strike, raising the specter of class warfare. Capitalists demanded that the government intervene to preserve order, and presidents responded by ordering the Army to enforce the law. Essentially middle class by birth, Army officers shared the capitalists’ ideology. Both groups were concerned about social stability and the sanctity of private property but little understood the conditions that drove workers to strike.

The 1877 strike began with railroad workers, but coal miners and the urban unemployed soon made common cause with them. Local law enforcement agencies and private industrial police were unable to restore order. Management appealed to governors for National Guard (militia) assistance, but some states found they had no militia, and those that did discovered their Guardsmen often sympathized with the strikers. Worried state officials and capitalists called for federal aid, and President Rutherford B. Hayes sent about 2,000 regulars to troubled areas, some arriving after forced marches from Indian country, “all tanned and grizzled, and with unwashed faces and unkempt hair, and their clothes covered with dust an inch thick in some places.”

Military intervention in labor disputes was not unprecedented (in 1834 President Jackson used troops in a labor disturbance), and Reconstruction familiarized Americans with using regulars upon a governor’s application. Still, Hayes’s action marked the beginning of a wrenching experience for the Army. During the next twenty years it participated in several other shattering labor upheavals and several minor ones. Three characteristics marked the Army’s role in labor troubles. First, in each situation the government and Army responded on an ad hoc basis. The government devised no policy, and the Army no contingency plans, for strike duty. Second, despite this handicap, the Army was effective. It not only restored order but also broke strikes, to the dismay of workers and the delight of capitalists. Third, the Army acted with restraint. Although sometimes met

with abuse and rocks, regulars refused to respond with violence. In 1877, for instance, local police, hired guards, and National Guardsmen killed 100 strikers, but regulars did not kill a single man.

“In reality, the Army is now a gendarmery—a national police,” wrote a colonel in 1895. The Army’s participation in labor strife apparently convinced a few officers that this was true. Arguing that the nation needed an enlarged Army to restrain the industrial proletariat, they requested increased appropriations and manpower. Actually, such appeals may have been consciously spurious. By 1890 the thrust of professionalization was toward creating a modern Army prepared for war, and the money and men allegedly needed to control “white savages” could be used for this primary mission. Strikebreaking was no more edifying than Reconstruction duty: One alienated southerners and the other antagonized labor, which trumpeted the old arguments against a standing army. In any event, the officers’ appeals did not work. Southern congressmen, remembering the army’s “tyranny,” obstructed Army legislation, and many other Americans were receptive to labor’s warning about despotism. Moreover, state officials no longer needed to rely on regulars. After an inept start in 1877, National Guard units became more efficient and assumed a greater role in quelling labor strife.

The need for a police force for strike duty was only one stimulus that revived the volunteer militia, which almost universally assumed the name National Guard in the postwar era. After the war southern militias, first Democratic and then Republican, reformed immediately, but northern units briefly deteriorated. The exhaustion with war and the sense of security that led to the Army’s reduction also sapped militia vitality. But by the early 1870s the traditional attractions of militia service began to resuscitate the institution. Spontaneous martial enthusiasm, the social prestige of belonging to an elite group, and the appeal to physical fitness, discipline, and duty sparked the renaissance.

Following the 1877 debacle the pace of the National Guard’s revival quickened. Between 1881 and 1892 every state revised its militia code, and in 1879 militia leaders formed the National Guard Association to lobby Congress for favorable legislation. However, the association’s only success came in 1887, when Congress doubled the annual appropriation begun in 1808 to $400,000. By the early 1890s the Guard contained more

than 100,000 men, predominantly from the middle class. Its foremost activity was preserving order in industrial disputes. Between 1877 and 1903 governors called out the Guard more than 700 times, and about half of the calls were for the Guard to perform strike police duty. Since many working people viewed the Guard as a capitalist tool and disliked it intensely, serving as strike police was no more rewarding for Guardsmen than for regulars. Indeed, when the National Guard Association asked for federal aid, it emphasized the Guard’s role as a reserve force, not as policemen. Thus neither regulars nor citizen-soldiers avidly pursued strike duty as a primary mission. But both groups sought other missions that armed forces modernization and professionalization offered.

Imperialism and Naval Modernization

Stimulated by America’s emerging imperialist impulse, technological developments, and officers’ career concerns, the armed forces started to modernize during the 1880s. A steam and steel “new navy” eased down the slips and onto the seas, and Congress appropriated funds to commence a new coastal fortifications program. To build ordnance and armor for the modern ships and coastal defenses, linkages developed among the military, government, and industry. During the century’s last two decades, America shifted from isolation to imperialism, its outward thrust combining idealism, cultural arrogance, and economic expediency. A resurgent Manifest Destiny proclaimed the white man’s moral responsibility to spread civilization, and Social Darwinists gave Manifest Destiny a “scientific” veneer, arguing that nations behaved like biological organisms. Only the fittest survived, so strong nations inevitably extended their power over weaker ones. And since Darwin described a struggle for survival, a nation must be prepared to fight. Some civil and military leaders actually glorified war. One congressman announced that “there are no great nations of Quakers,” and a naval officer wrote an essay in the North American Review extolling “The Benefits of War.”

The fusion of destiny, Darwinism, and a glorification of war was not the only cause of American imperialism. Some people thought the closing of the frontier, industrial overproduction, and labor unrest portended a crisis. They believed that America’s history was one of expansion, the

frontier (in theory) providing a “safety valve” for the discontented, raw materials, and a market for manufactured goods. With the frontier gone, was it coincidence that the nation suffered from excess production, depressions, and labor unrest? Policymakers sought a new frontier, primarily commercial rather than territorial, by channeling expansionist energies into an aggressive search for overseas markets to absorb the industrial glut, restore prosperity, and preserve domestic tranquility. The United States, however, did not have unfettered access to foreign markets. European empires controlled much of Asia and Africa, and some Europeans cast covetous eyes upon Latin America. President Chester A. Arthur had defined America as the “chief Pacific power” and the U.S. considered the Caribbean its private lake, but if the country did not enter the imperial quest, the great powers might foreclose its opportunities to sell exports in either region. Thus policymakers urged a strategy of preemptive imperialism: The United States should seize or dominate desirable areas before rivals gobbled them up.

Two imperatives flowed from the search for foreign markets. First, America must acquire more bases as trading and naval way stations to protect its interests and encourage commerce. Between 1867 and 1889 the United States purchased Alaska, occupied Midway, and acquired the right to build naval bases at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and Pago Pago, Samoa. (Few expansionists thought this was enough.) Second, the country must strengthen its coastal defenses and Navy, and broaden its definition of national security. Since the U.S. was becoming part of an interdependent world economic and political system, a commercial struggle might flash into an outright war, necessitating the protection of the continental domain and its overseas interests.

Rearmament advocates initially stressed traditional defensive strategies. An expanded Navy and modern fortifications would prevent an enemy from raiding the coast, bombarding wealthy port cities, and effecting a close blockade. By the mid-1880s the increased capabilities of European steam fleets made these prospects seem frightening. The Navy would also engage in single-ship operations, defending the merchant marine and foreign bases and destroying enemy commerce. However, a growing number of strategists questioned the viability of the traditional maritime strategies. They perceived that the telegraph and fast steam cruisers would

make commerce raiding difficult. Moreover, instead of sailing singly or hovering near the coast to defend important harbors, the ships of a modern Navy might be massed for offensive fleet actions at sea. As one congressman said in 1887, we want a Navy “with which we may meet the foe away from our coast when he comes.”

Technology joined imperialism as a spur to modernization. For twenty years Americans congratulated themselves for not following European nations that built the costly experimental weapons that soon became outmoded. But the technological advances had been tremendous. Delaying modernization much longer might mean falling irretrievably behind in the technological race. More important, European naval architects had eliminated much technical confusion, blending steam, armor, and improved guns into acceptable ship standards. Navies could dispense with full sail rigging, since better engines increased speed and range. Steel was superior to iron for hulls and armor, and hull compartmentalization would keep a damaged ship afloat. Guns came to be breechloading rifles using slow-burning powder that enhanced velocity. Compound barrels permitted lighter yet stronger guns, which hydraulic recoil mechanisms automatically returned to their firing position. In 1883 a naval commander summed up an increasingly universal feeling: “The present time is very favorable; it is possible after twenty years of experiments, mainly by foreign nations, the results of which are known to us, to build a fine fleet, of such numbers as may be judged necessary, and equal to performance and wants now well understood; a fleet that shall be superior ship for ship to the same kind of vessels elsewhere.”

Army and Navy officers, particularly junior ones, pushed modernization for national security reasons, but also for narrow career interests. Promotion remained slow; larger, modern forces with important missions would break the logjam. With the ending of the Indian wars, the Army had lost its most active mission. Police duty was an unsatisfactory substitute, and no strategists envisioned sending large expeditionary forces abroad. At most the nation might require small Army forces to help the Navy temporarily defend a few points on foreign soil. The Army embraced a new fortifications program, for coastal defense seemed its sole remaining significant function. While reminding the public of the Navy’s role in aiding businessmen abroad, naval officers propagandized for the

new Navy among selected groups. They lobbied among shipbuilders, steel firms, and weapons manufacturers who would benefit from naval construction. Navalists also supported an expanded merchant marine, hoping they could convince the business community that more commerce justified more warships.

Ever since the Virginius affair of 1873–1874, navalists had lobbied intensively for a revitalized Navy, but it took a decade for them to achieve even modest results. The Navy’s serious rebuilding effort began in 1882– 1883 under Secretary of the Navy William H. Hunt, who persuaded President Chester A. Arthur that new construction was necessary. “Every condition of national safety, economy, and honor demands a thorough rehabilitation of the Navy,” the president told Congress, which responded in 1882 with an act authorizing two steel cruisers, though it failed to appropriate funds to build them. The same law limited repairs on existing ships, which ensured an early retirement for the “old navy,” and authorized the secretary to appoint a Naval Advisory Board, which recommended four steel cruisers and a dispatch boat. Congress eliminated one cruiser and in the Naval Appropriations Act of 1883 authorized and funded the protected (armored) cruisers Atlanta, Boston, and Chicago and the dispatch vessel Dolphin (known as the ABCD ships). The cruisers were transitional vessels, sail-rigged but with steel hulls, compartmentalization, steam engines, screw propellers, electric power plants, and breechloading rifles using slow-burning powder. Between 1884 and 1889 Congress authorized eight more protected cruisers (including Charleston, the first modern U.S. ship without sails), three unprotected cruisers, six steel gunboats, three armored cruisers (two of them, Maine and Texas, were originally classified as second-class battleships), and a few monitors. The new Navy initially remained wedded to the old mission of showing the flag and protecting commerce. The ships still lacked the armor and armaments to engage European fleets, yet they were ideal for intimidating nonindustrialized peoples and could carry out attacks on enemy commerce.

A fundamental change in naval policy occurred in the early 1890s, prompted by Secretary of the Navy Benjamin R. Tracy, who believed that the “sea will be the future seat of empire. And we shall rule it as certainly as the sun doth rise!” To do so, the United States needed bases (perhaps

even colonies) and a great Navy, and Tracy was an avid expansionist and an ardent navalist. He cast his imperialist eye on several islands, but all his schemes failed. He had more success with the development of the Navy. His first annual report in November 1889, which reflected increasingly widespread professional naval thought, represented a clear break with past strategy. Instead of emphasizing coastal defense and commerce protection and raiding, he called for a new doctrine of command of the sea based on battleships capable of destroying an enemy’s fleet in midocean. “The country,” he said, “needs a navy that will exempt it from war, but the only navy that will accomplish this is a navy that can wage war.” The present force of cruisers and gunboats did “not constitute a fighting force.” He recommended building eight battleships for the Pacific and twelve for the Atlantic, all of them “the best of their class in four leading characteristics: armament, armor, structural strength, and speed.” He also suggested a complementary force of sixty cruisers (thirty- one of which were already built or authorized) and twenty coastal defense vessels. He believed the U.S. could easily afford such a Navy and that its construction would benefit labor.

Tracy’s recommendations for 100 modern warships might have seemed excessive had not the Policy Board’s report of January 1890 been leaked to the press. Appointed by Tracy to study naval requirements and prepare a long-range plan, the board called for more than 200 ships! With the Tracy and Policy Board reports before them, congressmen engaged in an acrimonious debate. Many recognized that battleships marked a radical departure and hesitated to embark on an uncharted voyage. Some wanted only monitors and coastal fortifications, others preferred cruisers and gunboats. The resulting naval bill was a compromise. It authorized three battleships, but designated them “sea-going coastal battleships” and limited them to a 4,500-mile range. Traditionalists could thus consider Oregon, Indiana, and Massachusetts as little more than updated monitors with an enhanced ability to break a blockade. Yet the battleships did mark a departure, the starting point for a new maritime strategy that strove to gain command of the sea. Once begun, Congress did not reverse the trend. In 1892 it funded Iowa, a battleship with no statutory range limit; in 1895 it authorized two more battleships and in 1896 another three.

Tracy not only introduced battleships into the Navy but also formed a “squadron of evolution” in 1889 that was the precursor of a concentrated battlefleet. Comprised of the ABC cruisers and a steel gunboat, it practiced steaming in formation and tactical maneuvers, which were faster and more complex than under sail. In 1892 the Navy Department merged the squadron into the North Atlantic Squadron, which by 1897 developed into a fighting fleet. With good reason Tracy could claim in 1892 that progress made during his tenure marked “an epoch in the naval development, not only of this country, but of the world.”

A well-defended coast was an essential adjunct to a strong navy. Both Army and Navy officers realized that “the navy is the aggressive arm of the national military power.” However, it could undertake an offensive mission only if it had secure home ports and if relieved of defensive duties. The Chilean bombardment of Callao, Peru, in 1880 and the British bombardment of Alexandria, Egypt, in 1882 were vivid reminders of an undefended port’s fate. American cities must be secure from similar attacks and from the prospect of a squadron holding them ransom, extracting money and exerting diplomatic leverage in return for immunity from shellings. In 1883 President Arthur called congressional attention to the obsolete coastal defenses, and the next year Commanding General Schofield’s annual report spoke of “the perfectly defenseless condition of our seaboard cities.” Sparked to action, in the Fortifications Appropriations Act of March 1885 Congress directed the president to appoint an Army-Navy civilian board, headed by Secretary of War William C. Endicott, to investigate the problem.

The Endicott Board report of 1886 painted a grim picture of the seaport defenses and proposed a massive fortress program estimated at $127 million. It recommended large numbers of breechloading rifles and rifled mortars, supported by floating batteries, submarine mines, torpedo boats, rapid-firing guns, machine guns, and electric searchlights, for twenty-six coastal localities and three Great Lakes sites. In 1888 Congress created a permanent Army Board of Ordnance and Fortifications to test weapons and make proposals for implementing the program. Funding for construction began in 1890, though at a more modest level than the Endicott Board had suggested. The work fell behind the original

projections from the start, yet new defenses to match the new Navy were underway.

Building the ships and ordnance inextricably linked the government, the military, and industry. When the new Navy began, a fundamental question arose: How should the nation acquire the tools of war? Should it rely upon the private economic sector, which might lead to monopolies with respect to designs and prices? Or should it depend on government arsenals, an arrangement that smacked of socialism and might be less efficient than profit-motivated private enterprise? Or would some combination of private and public facilities be better? To study this problem, the Naval Appropriations Act of 1883 created a Gun Foundry Board composed of six Army and Navy officers. After investigating arms manufacturing in Europe, the board recommended a mixed system. The government should offer contracts to private firms to supply basic steels and forgings, which government-owned plants would fabricate into finished guns and ships. The officers suggested the Army’s Watervliet Arsenal and the Washington Navy Yard as excellent assembly plants.

The government accepted the Gun Foundry Board’s report. The 1886 law authorizing Texas and Maine stipulated that they be built with domestic steel and machinery, and that at least one of the ships be constructed in a navy yard. To entice firms to bid, the secretary of the navy pooled orders for Texas, Maine, and four monitors into one $4 million contract, and in mid-1887 awarded it to the Bethlehem Iron (later Steel) Company. Subsequent contracts also went to Carnegie, Phipps and Company (later Carnegie Steel).

By the mid-1890s construction of the Navy and the coastal fortifications had intertwined private and public policy in a mutually beneficial relationship. Manufacturing armor and ordnance required expensive plants employing skilled workmen; to cease construction would idle the factories and create unemployment or disperse the workers into other endeavors. Thus economic depressions no longer meant decreased government expenditures but increased expenditures to keep factories operating and workers employed. This motive may have influenced the 1895–1896 battleship authorizations during the depression that began in 1893. Military contracts certainly allowed the Bethlehem and Carnegie firms, and their supporting subcontractors and shipbuilders, to survive

while other establishments went bankrupt. In short, armed forces modernization bound together the public welfare, private interest, and national security.

Reforming the Armed Forces

“History does not countenance the idea that an untroubled assurance of peace is a guarantee that war will not come,” wrote a naval essayist in 1879. “Lessons” drawn from history often rest upon feeble analysis and faulty analogy, but the writer had a point. Sooner or later, war came. To military reformers viewing the global great power rivalry, progressively involving the United States, a big war against a powerful adversary was not impossible. Indeed, the central theme in late-nineteenth-century military theorizing was that in peace the armed forces should prepare for war against even the most formidable potential enemy. While seemingly a truism, this postulate represented a rejection of past policy.

Traditionally the nation maintained small peacetime constabularies— the Army on the frontier and the Navy on its stations—and then extemporized fighting forces during wartime. Such a policy, professionals argued, would no longer suffice. The potential foes were too strong, the lead time in producing modern weapons was too long, and warfare had become so complex that hastily mobilized amateurs could not master it. In determining the composition and strength of the Army and Navy, the U.S. should look beyond Indians and pirates to the leading European nations, especially Germany and England. Officers also thought that preparing for war required the ability to wage it “scientifically.” In their quest for efficiency they reflected a societal trend. During the initial stages of the Progressive movement in America, captains of industry applied scientific managerial techniques to the problems of production. “Progressives in uniform” sought similar expertise and bureaucratic forms, which would allow them to utilize prewar preparations in the most “scientific” wartime manner.

The reformers’ greatest success was creating a more complete educational system. This success was due in large part to General Sherman (the commanding general between 1869 and 1883) and Rear Admiral Stephen B. Luce, two men who epitomized the professional

spirit. Each was responsible for establishing an important school and both supported other schools, journals, and institutes, all fostering the expertise and corporate spirit essential for professional identity. Sherman and Luce also each nurtured a protégé (Emory Upton and Alfred Thayer Mahan, respectively) whose writings profoundly influenced military affairs.

A man of great intellect, Sherman vigorously pushed for Army education. He believed West Point was only the beginning of military education, envisioning it at the base of a pyramid consisting of advanced schools where officers gained specialized knowledge; at the apex he hoped for a “war college.” Sherman sustained the 1868 revival of Calhoun’s old Artillery School, encouraged the development of an Engineering School of Application, and, most important, founded the School of Application for Infantry and Cavalry at Fort Leavenworth. It began as a training school for junior officers that emphasized small-unit tactics, but two outstanding officer-instructors, Eben Swift and Arthur L. Wagner, stressed an analytical approach to learning rather than rote memorization and redirected the school toward a true staff college devoted, as Sherman said, to “the science and practice of war.” Meanwhile, creative officers formed additional schools for the field artillery and cavalry combined, the Signal Corps, and the Hospital Corps, plus an Army Medical School. Sherman was also instrumental in the founding of the Military Service Institution in 1878, a professional society that brought together officers with a common interest in acquiring specialized knowledge. The Institution promoted writing and discussion about military science by publishing a bimonthly journal. It also spawned the formation of branch associations for the infantry, cavalry, artillery, and military surgeons, each publishing its own journal.

Perhaps Sherman’s greatest contribution to military education was the encouragement he gave to Emory Upton, whose writings dominated Army thought well into the twentieth century. An 1861 West Point graduate, Upton had a meteoric Civil War career. Beginning as a second lieutenant, he was a brevet major general before his twenty-fifth birthday. Yet the war disturbed him. “I am disgusted with the generalship displayed,” he wrote during the Wilderness campaign. Too many men had been “wantonly sacrificed” in frontal assaults. “Thousands of lives might have been

spared,” he continued, “by the exercise of a little skill; but, as it is, the courage of the poor man is expected to obviate all difficulties.” In 1867 he published Infantry Tactics, which adapted tactics to rifled and breechloading shoulder arms, and the War Department immediately adopted the book for use in the Army and militia. The book emphasized simplicity in drill, specially trained and more numerous skirmishers, less dense attacking formations, and the need for soldiers to exhibit an intelligent initiative.

Upton, however, believed the major problem was a defective military policy. Appointed commandant of cadets at West Point, Upton developed a close relationship with Sherman, who, in 1875, appointed Upton to a commission assigned to propose Army reforms based upon its studies of foreign military systems. After the world tour Upton wrote two books, The Armies of Asia and Europe and The Military Policy of the United States. The latter, one of the most significant books in American military history, was a clarion call for drastic policy changes.

As Upton perceived it, U.S. policy contained near-fatal weaknesses. Excessive civilian control was a fundamental flaw, since most congressmen, presidents, and secretaries of war were inexperienced in military matters. The nation as a whole had an “unfounded jealousy of not a large, but even a small standing army.” Thus America relied upon unreliable citizen-soldiers. Although volunteers and militiamen could be brave, Upton considered their short enlistments, lack of discipline, dual state-federal control, and untrained officers as crushing liabilities, making them useless as a reserve force. Since these defects prevented adequate preparations, the country’s wars usually began with failures, were longer than they should have been, and entailed “enormous and unnecessary sacrifices of life and treasure.” “Ultimate success in all our wars,” warned Upton, “has steeped the people in the delusion that our military policy is correct and that any departure from it would be no less difficult than dangerous.” Nothing, he argued, could be further from the truth.

While in Europe, Upton studied the German military, which offered a stark contrast. The Germans had a General Staff that operated in comparative freedom from civilian restraint. Unlike America’s staff, which was simply an aggregation of the bureau chiefs, the German staff made peacetime preparations for war, gathering information about foreign

armies, drawing up war plans, and controlling an educational system that ensured competent collective leadership. The regular Army was large and proficient and organized on the cadre, or expansible, principle. Germany relied on conscription and assigned its veterans to seven years’ service in the reserves, which were under national control. With these sound practices, Upton said, Germany defeated Austria in six weeks and humbled the vaunted French in just three and a half months.

Upton proposed revolutionary reforms to prevent a repetition of America’s past folly. Although he claimed that the United States “can not Germanize” and that it would not be desirable to do so, Upton’s reforms had a definite Teutonic ring. The country should abolish its present General Staff and create a Germanic one, enhancing the powers of professionals relative to the president and secretary of war. An enlarged regular Army, organized on the expansible principle, should be at the center of military planning. To flesh out the Army in wartime, the United States should rely on “National Volunteers” controlled and led by regulars. Although he admired conscription and considered it a “truly democratic doctrine,” Upton only obliquely advocated it, knowing the public would not accept peacetime conscription. The militia would be a force of last resort, used solely to execute the laws, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.

Upton’s ideas collided with America’s most revered traditions, ran counter to the prevailing aversion to spending more money on an Army already performing its duties satisfactorily, and suffered from problems as fundamental as those he thought existed in America’s policy. In unreservedly praising regulars and denigrating militiamen and volunteers, Upton misused history. Regulars were not uniformly successful, and citizen-soldiers were not always pathetic. As Washington, Jackson, Forrest, Lincoln, and others demonstrated, superb leaders could be created in arenas other than the Army. Nor did Upton understand that policy cannot be judged by any absolute standard. It reflects a nation’s characteristics, habits of thought, geographic location, and historical development. Built upon the genius, traditions, and location of Germany, the system he admired could not be grafted onto America. In essence, Upton wrote in a vacuum. He began with a fixed view of the policy he thought the U.S. needed, and he wanted the rest of society to change to

meet his demands, which it sensibly declined to do. Thus, for example, his plan for a large expansible Army faltered for obvious reasons. No peacetime nucleus big enough to avoid being swamped by a wartime influx of citizen-soldiers was politically, economically, or strategically feasible or necessary.

Despite the fallacies in his reasoning, Upton spoke for a generation of officers. He simply presented the ideas in systematic form, buttressed them with “scholarship,” and “proved” the professionals’ case. However, the Burnside Committee of 1878 showed how unrealistic the Upton reforms were within the context of late-nineteenth-century American society. Established by Congress to study Army reform and chaired by former general (now senator) Ambrose Burnside, the committee heard testimony from generals as diverse as McClellan and Sherman. All but one urged the expansible Army plan and other Upton proposals. Yet Congress defeated a bill incorporating these suggestions. Discouraged by his professional failures and suffering from violent headaches (for which doctors could find neither a cause nor a cure), Upton committed suicide in 1881. Many officers, realizing that the United States would not soon change its command and manpower policies, viewed the future pessimistically. But some began searching for sounder policy alternatives that would strengthen the Army without Germanizing it.

While the army had Sherman and Upton, the Navy had Luce and Mahan. Encouraged by Sherman and Upton, Luce was the foremost proponent of naval education and the driving force behind the formation of the United States Naval Institute in 1873. Analogous to the Army’s Military Service Institution, the Naval Institute began publishing its Proceedings on a regular basis in 1879. But Luce’s greatest achievement was persuading Secretary of the Navy William E. Chandler to begin the Naval War College at Newport, Rhode Island, in 1884. “No less a task is proposed,” wrote Luce, who was the college’s first president, “than to apply modern scientific methods to the study and raise naval warfare from the empirical stage to the dignity of a science.” Since the Navy had no authoritative treatise on naval warfare fought under steam power, he proposed to discover the requisite principles through a comparative approach. By studying the conduct of warfare on land, he believed that naval officers could establish parallel principles for sea warfare. Realizing

that the key faculty member would be the lecturer on naval history, Luce looked “for that master mind” who would do for naval science “what Jomini has done for military science.” As he later wrote, “He appeared in the person of Captain A.T. Mahan, U.S.N.”

Nothing in his previous career foretold greatness for Mahan. The son of West Point’s Dennis H. Mahan, he attended the Naval Academy against his father’s wishes, graduating in 1859. During the following years of uneventful service, he developed a hatred of the sea and maneuvered for shore duty whenever possible. He hoped to win renown through intellectual performance, and in 1883 he published a competent study of the Civil War Navy. Accepting Luce’s offer to teach at the Naval War College, he spent the winter of 1885–1886 preparing his lectures. Published in 1890 as The Influence of Sea Power upon History, 1660–1783, the lectures established his reputation as the world’s foremost naval historian.

The book, supplemented by Mahan’s article titled “The United States Looking Outward” that also appeared in 1890, set forth a philosophy of sea power linking national greatness, prosperity, and commerce to imperialism and navalism. From his research Mahan concluded that England became a great nation by controlling the seas and the commerce they bore. Britain could attack an enemy’s colonies, blockade its ports, and choke off its trade routes. Enumerating six elements of sea power based primarily on England’s experience, Mahan emphasized the applicability of these factors to the U.S. and concluded that it possessed the ingredients to become a world sea power.

To achieve greatness, the United States must abandon its “continentalist” policy in favor of more aggressive competition for world trade, which required a strong merchant marine, colonies, and a big navy. The merchant marine would carry foreign trade and serve “as the nursery of naval attitudes,” while colonies provided raw materials, markets, and naval bases. Mahan especially wanted to annex Hawaii as a bridge to Asia and to control any future Central American canal, which would be a funnel for world trade and inevitably attract Europeans bent on defiling the Monroe Doctrine. An avowed missionary for Manifest Destiny, Mahan also perceived colonies as toeholds for extending Western civilization. A powerful navy would protect the merchant marine and colonies, but not

by the traditional guerre de course. Mahan considered it useless as a primary strategy, since history “taught” him that commerce raiding never won a war. A navy’s purpose was to gain “command of the sea” by defeating the enemy fleet in a decisive battle. Only battleships, not cruisers and destroyers, could fight such battles. A concentrated battleship fleet was “the arm of offensive power, which alone enables a country to extend its influence outward.”

Mahan preached a gospel of armed aggressiveness that won him world acclaim (and healthy royalties). His writings took England by storm. He received honorary degrees from Oxford and Cambridge, dined with the First Sea Lord of the Admiralty, and was the first foreigner ever entertained at the Royal Navy Club. Germany’s Kaiser tried to learn Mahan’s book by heart and ordered translations put aboard every ship in the Imperial fleet. In Japan the Emperor, government leaders, and the officer corps received copies. In the United States Navy his writings became holy writ, sanctifying its requests for more and better ships. Mahan’s main purpose in writing The Influence was to provide a rationale for naval expansion, and he succeeded admirably.

Like Upton, Mahan achieved fame even though his ideas were not novel and his arguments contained weaknesses. Numerous officers and informed civilians had understood the sea power concept before Mahan put pen to paper. During the late 1870s and 1880s, Porter, Schufeldt, Luce, and many other officers expressed Mahanian ideas, as did expansionist civilians such as Tracy. Mahan merely codified the big-navy philosophy of his age, but he had the advantages of writing eloquently and at the moment when imperialism and navalism were in full flower. Mahan also used history as badly as Upton and drew a false analogy between the U.S. and a European country. Relying on the Royal Navy’s example, he believed that a similar American navy would yield comparable diplomatic and military benefits. However, Mahan was careless with his facts, studied a unique era when no rival navy matched England’s, and only paid lip service to Britain’s geographic position and fortuitous control of crucial narrow seas. He never really understood that America was a continent not an island, that the Atlantic was not the Channel, and that the Caribbean was not the Mediterranean. Intellectually rooted in the age of sail and convinced that the principles of strategy did not change despite evolving

technology, Mahan ignored technological developments, such as submarines, self-propelled torpedoes, floating mines, airplanes, and expanding networks of railroads and all-weather roads, all of which in part modified his battleship/command-of-the-sea thesis. Although some of these innovations were not evident in 1890, most were by Mahan’s death in 1914. Immensely influential yet doctrinally conservative, Mahan hastened the building of a battleship navy designed to fight decisive battles for “command of the sea.”

Along with the growing sophistication of military education, another professional triumph for the reformers was the creation of embryonic intelligence organizations. In 1882 the Navy Department established the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI), and in 1885 the War Department formed a similar organization, eventually known as the Military Information Division (MID). These groups served almost as European- style general staffs, creating at least a rudimentary foundation for rational planning. Through Washington-based staffs and attachés assigned to America’s principal embassies, ONI and MID gathered data about foreign military affairs, began to prepare war mobilization plans, and disseminated maps, charts, and specialized military reports. Predictably, a rivalry developed between ONI and MID. When ONI’s chief discovered an Army intelligence officer borrowing a report, he was incensed. “Such an incident as this served to make me doubly cautious,” he wrote, “especially in dealing with these army people, who in matters of tact or discretion seem to me to be a lower order of intellect than the mule.” In spite of the bickering, ONI and MID were vital steps toward the professional’s foremost objective, the preparation for war in time of peace.

Armed forces progressives had mixed success in reforming their personnel, reserve forces, and command systems. Since conditions for enlisted men had not improved since before the Civil War, few well- adjusted, native-born Americans enlisted, and the services included many criminals, outcasts, and foreigners. At times more than 50 percent of the men in both services were foreign-born, though some were naturalized citizens. For relief, enlisted personnel resorted to “watered whiskey and wayward women,” suicide, and especially desertion. At times the Army’s desertion rate climbed as high as 33 percent. The Navy averaged 1,000

desertions a year out of an authorized strength of 8,000, which made its manpower problems acute since naval modernization required more men.

By the late nineteenth century authorities were so concerned about the large number of foreigners in the Army and the high desertion rate that they made a conscious effort to Americanize the Army and improve the living conditions of enlisted men. The adjutant general ordered recruiters into rural areas to reduce the proportion of enlistees from northern cities with large immigrant populations, which were the Army’s traditional recruiting grounds. And Congress passed a law declaring that enlistees must be citizens (or have made a legal declaration of their intent to become citizens) and know how to read, write, and speak English. Moreover, reformers in both services maintained that tolerable treatment of enlisted personnel would attract better men and reduce the desertion rate. They proposed a number of improvements, such as better food, clothing, and living quarters, higher pay, greater promotion opportunities, and an equitable legal system. But progress was slow and uneven, hampered by public apathy, congressional economy, and opposition from conservative officers who believed these changes ruined discipline.

Personnel reform extended to the officer corps, where reformers also achieved modest progress. One demand was for promotion on ability rather than seniority. To determine ability, reformers suggested rigorous examinations and annual fitness reports. Although conservatives argued that politics and social influence would pervert selective promotion, in 1890 the Army required examinations for officers below the rank of major, and in the mid-1890s it instituted efficiency reports for all officers. In 1899 the Navy acquired a rudimentary system of promotion by merit that allowed for the “selecting out” of ineffective officers reaching the grade of captain. Neither service’s promotion system worked very effectively, but the systems established the principle of selection by merit. Reformers also wanted a compulsory retirement system, on the assumption that aged officers lost their initiative and energy. Older officers disagreed, but in 1882 Congress enacted mandatory retirement at age sixty-four.

One of the Army’s most troublesome problems was whether a national reserve or the state-controlled National Guard would be its first line of support. Almost all regulars preferred an Upton-style national reserve,

separate from the militias and under federal control. They wanted militias to perform auxiliary duties as short-term local defense units and to serve as manpower reservoirs for national forces. In the regulars’ eyes the Guard was not battle-ready, and its mobilization would raise perplexing questions: Could federalized militias serve more than three months, and could they serve overseas? State authorities and National Guardsmen opposed a federal reserve, but Guardsmen disagreed on what their role was. Militiamen from the Atlantic coast and Canadian border states accepted the Army’s definition of their function, since proximity to important ports and fortifications guaranteed them a vital local defense role. However, they were reluctant to serve for more than a few months and opposed overseas service. Guardsmen from inland states, whose homes would not be threatened, rejected the regulars’ definition. Wanting recognition as the organized cadre of any wartime volunteer force, they were willing to undertake extended campaigns, even overseas. Despite their differences over the composition and control of reserve forces, regulars and Guardsmen moved toward closer cooperation. The Army loaned cannons and mortars to militia units, detailed officers to inspect National Guard encampments and assist in training, and occasionally participated in joint maneuvers. However, the basic issue of the Guard’s military function remained unresolved.

The Navy faced a similar problem concerning the naval militia. Encouraged by the National Guard’s example, in 1888 Massachusetts established the first naval militia, and by 1898 fifteen state militias had a combined strength of 4,215. Many professionals viewed the new organizations warily, preferring a national naval reserve. Since militias were under state control and had elected officers, the Navy could not ensure their quality. Officers also questioned whether technology had not made amateur sailors an anachronism and feared that the naval militia might distract attention from more important matters, like building battleships. Still, in the absence of a national reserve, militias provided a second-line force that might be useful for coastal defense. Federal and state forces began to cooperate, beginning in 1891 with an annual $25,000 appropriation for the “arming and equipping of the Naval Militia.” The Navy loaned warships for militia training and conducted joint summer cruises, a few militia officers attended the Naval War College, and the

Navy Department created an Office of Naval Militia. But as with the Guard, the fundamental question of the naval militia’s role in national defense remained unanswered.

The progressives’ biggest failure in the last third of the nineteenth century was their inability to reform the military’s command structure. The Army discarded the Civil War chief of staff and Army Board, leaving the prewar structure intact. At the top was the secretary, usually a civilian lacking military knowledge and burdened with routine detail. Below the secretary were the bureaus, each headed by an independent Army chief. Although proficient and even progressive within their own individual areas of highly technical activity, the bureaus remained woefully deficient in overall planning and coordination. Standing somewhere in the organizational chart (no one knew exactly where) was the commanding general, whose authority was uncertain. Having achieved his position through seniority, he and the secretary were often incompatible. These three disconnected power centers spent much time in bureaucratic conflict at the expense of coordinated effort, the strife manifesting itself in the ongoing line-staff feud. The secretary received no united professional advice, and no agency had clear responsibility for studying problems of wartime high command and mobilization. The Navy Department lacked a position analogous to the commanding general, but the secretary and bureau chiefs managed to foster similar bureaucratic confusion.

Both services tried expedients to solve their command problems. When Sherman became commanding general, President Grant promised that he would be the Army’s professional head and ordered all segments of the Army to report to Sherman. However, Grant soon rescinded the order when the bureau chiefs rebelled and Congress complained that subordinating the bureaus to the commanding general violated the law. When Schofield became commanding general in 1888, he solved the problem by relinquishing all pretense of commanding the Army. Realizing that Upton’s call for military independence from civilian control was unacceptable, he served the secretary as a military adviser, or de facto chief of staff. Schofield’s solution worked well, but his successor, Nelson A. Miles, refused to subordinate himself to anyone. His ambitions shattered the harmony of the Schofield years and revived the command muddle. Navy secretaries sought control over their bureaus by creating ad

hoc boards. Usually formed for a specific purpose, the boards reported and then dissolved, leaving no permanent imprint.

By the 1890s progressive officers, usually from the line, unanimously wanted a general staff for each service and rotation between staff and line. The staffs would undertake planning and coordinating functions, while rotation would temper the line-staff imbroglio. But the reformers failed. Congress had scant interest in reform, bureau chiefs resisted, and conservative officers objected. Under the current system the United States had won its wars, so why change?

In 1897 the German General Staff published a survey of world military forces. Although it detailed such “powers” as Portugal and Montenegro, the study excluded the United States Army. The omission was logical; compared to European armies, the Americans’ 28,000 officers and men did not represent an “army” in any operational sense of the word. Yet the Army was not somnolent. Its external appearance was little changed, but reformist officers had established the basis for a modern force. If Europeans could safely ignore the Army, the United States Navy was another matter. By 1898, with four first-class battleships (and five more building), two second-class battleships, two armored cruisers, and more than a dozen protected cruisers, the Navy was ascending toward European standards. Supported by the new seacoast emplacements, an expanding specialized industrial base, and the writings of Mahan, the Navy was on the brink of its debut as a world sea power.

NINE

The Birth of an American Empire, 1898– 1902

On the night of February 15, 1898, a Marine bugler played “Taps” aboard USS Maine, anchored in Havana’s harbor since late January. Captain Charles D. Sigsbee, the ship’s commander, finished writing a letter as the notes drifted off into the evening stillness. Just as he reached for an envelope, “a bursting, rending, and crashing roar of immense volume” rocked the ship, which trembled, listed to port, and settled into the mud. Out of 354 officers and men on board, 266 died in the explosion. What caused the disaster? No one knew for sure, but one thing was certain: The incident made war between the United States and Spain more likely.

Relations between the two countries had gradually deteriorated after the Cuban Revolution began in 1895. Commanded by Maximo Gomez, the revolutionary army relied on guerrilla warfare and devastation of the island’s economy to expel the Spanish. Eventually, Gomez thought, either Spain would cede independence or the U.S. would intervene on the rebels’ behalf. But Spain had no intention of granting independence to the last remnant of its New World empire and poured troops into the island. A “reconcentration” policy, initiated by Governor General Valeriano Weyler, involved herding the rural population into specified towns and areas while Spanish forces systematically devastated the countryside. Weyler hoped that the rebels, deprived of food, recruits, and timely information regarding enemy movements, would capitulate.

Americans watched the savage war with growing concern. Humanitarianism swelled for the Cubans’ suffering, as thousands died under Weyler’s reconcentration program. By disrupting trade with Cuba and threatening American investments there, the war touched not only Americans’ hearts but also their pocketbooks. The U.S. proclaimed neutrality in the summer of 1895, but enforcing it was hard, and maintaining coastal patrols and prosecuting offenders was expensive. Moreover, American expansionists considered Cuba in a larger perspective. Stressing the virtues of world power, they were eager to intervene as a means of propelling the nation into an active international role.

Imperialist aspirations collided with President William McKinley’s aversion to war and emphasis on domestic economic affairs. Having served in the Civil War, the president had seen enough death and destruction. With the country in a depression, he concentrated on tariff reform and maintaining a sound currency. Desiring a diplomatic solution, he refused to recognize Cuban belligerency or make preparations for possible intervention. Yet McKinley hinted that his patience was not inexhaustible and that Spain must end the suffering in the “near future.” He was also an astute politician who valued public opinion, which became increasingly pro-intervention. Pressed by McKinley, in late 1897 Spain initiated reforms, suspending the reconcentration policy, granting amnesty to political prisoners, and adopting an autonomy plan that gave Cuba greater home rule but left Spanish sovereignty intact. But the rebels rejected the scheme, and the Spanish garrison in Havana rioted in protest against it. The war continued, with neither side able to win.

Events in early 1898 drove Spain and the U.S. to war. On February 9 a stolen letter from the Spanish minister in Washington appeared in the press. It contained insulting comments about McKinley and revealed that Spain was not serious about its reformist policy. A week later Maine sank. Although an accidental internal explosion probably destroyed the ship, many Americans blamed Spain for the disaster, an impression heightened when a naval board of inquiry—hardly an objective group of inquisitors— concluded that a submarine mine had caused the ship’s forward magazines to explode. Just prior to the board’s report, Senator Redfield Proctor recounted his impressions from a recent tour of Cuba, detailing

the human tragedy with dispassionate yet compelling language. Vividly described in the press, these events created a “sort of bellicose fury” among the public, which demanded intervention.

Ultimately responsive to public opinion, in late March McKinley informed Spain that it must grant Cuban independence. Confronted with this ultimatum, Spain stalled for time, hoping to avoid a crisis by indefinitely delaying it and trying (unsuccessfully) to mobilize European support to deter American intervention. Spain also made further concessions, declaring an armistice on April 10. But it would not concede independence. On April 11 McKinley asked Congress for authority to intervene to stop the misery and death, protect American lives and property in Cuba, curtail the damage to commerce, and end the onerous task of enforcing neutrality. Congress responded with a joint resolution that called for independence, immediate Spanish withdrawal, and, if necessary, use of armed force to attain these goals. The Teller Amendment to the resolution disclaimed any intention of annexing Cuba. On April 23 Spain declared war, as did the United States two days later.

Mobilizing for War

Although he went to war reluctantly, McKinley was a strong commander in chief. He controlled strategy and diplomacy through a White House “war room” replete with large-scale maps studded with colored flags showing the location of troops and ships, telephones linking McKinley to cabinet officers and Congress, and telegraphic hookups giving him rapid overseas communications. The president devised an appropriate, limited- war strategy that effectively utilized force to further the nation’s limited political objective of compelling Spain to grant Cuban independence. He pursued a peripheral strategy, directing attacks against Spain’s colonies, hoping that many small victories, even if far from the enemy homeland, would have a cumulative effect. The president also served as liaison man between the Army and Navy and became involved in the details of Army operations. Understanding that overseas operations required joint planning, Secretary of War Russell A. Alger and Secretary of the Navy John D. Long organized an Army-Navy Board, composed of one officer

from each service. However, the board was ineffectual, leaving McKinley as the interservice mediator.

The personalities of Alger and Commanding General Miles exacerbated the inherent difficulties in the command structure. Affable yet egotistical, Alger knew little about modern warfare, while Miles’s vanity, political ambitions, and desire to control Army operations made him ill-suited for his position. Alger and Miles quarreled incessantly, and McKinley learned to distrust them. For professional advice, the president initially turned to Schofield, who had retired in 1895, but increasingly relied on Adjutant General Henry C. Corbin. Discreet and committed to civilian control, Corbin became the president’s de facto chief of staff, assisting him with decisions that Alger and Miles should have made but did not.

Spain was poorly prepared for war, both militarily and psychologically. It had a large army, with 150,000 regulars in Cuba, 8,000 in Puerto Rico, 20,000 in the Philippines, and another 150,000 at home, but the figures were deceptive. Hard fighting against Cuban and Filipino revolutionaries, plus the debilitating effects of tropical diseases, had drained the colonial forces. The home army could not be deployed unless Spain controlled the seas, and its navy was small, in serious disrepair, and lacked trained crews. In the Atlantic, Spain kept part of its navy at Cadiz and assembled a squadron, commanded by Admiral Pascual de Cervera, at the Cape Verde Islands. Its destination was the Caribbean, but each of America’s battleships was capable of single-handedly defeating the squadron. In the Philippines, Spain had another antique squadron, commanded by Admiral Patricio Montojo. Many Spanish statesmen and officers were pessimistic, knowing they had little chance to win. At best, they hoped for a gallant and resourceful defeat.

The initial strategic principle for United States military preparations was that the war would be mainly a naval conflict, with little Army activity. The Navy would destroy enemy squadrons and merchant shipping, and perhaps bombard or blockade Spanish cities and colonies. No one contemplated dispatching large expeditionary armies to invade Spain or to conquer its colonies, although almost everyone assumed that the Army would send small forces to aid the Cubans. The Army’s paramount duty would probably be manning the coastal fortifications against possible

enemy raids. The disposition of a $50 million military appropriation, approved by Congress on March 9, reflected strategic thinking: The Navy received three-fifths of the funds.

With their share of the appropriation, Long and Assistant Secretary of the Navy Theodore Roosevelt readied the naval forces. Orders went out for commanders to retain men whose enlistments were about to expire, and the Navy stockpiled ammunition and fuel. The Navy Department ordered the battleship Oregon from the Pacific coast to the Caribbean. Rear Admiral Horace Eban received orders to prepare for the mobilization of a “mosquito flotilla” (later called the Auxiliary Naval Force) manned by the naval militia, which provided 4,000 officers and men during the war. The Navy also purchased or chartered warships and suitable merchant vessels and pleasure boats. In late February, Roosevelt sent orders to the European and Asiatic Squadron commanders to prepare for war. Finally, in March Long established a three-man Naval War Board, which included Mahan, to give him strategic advice.

All of these preparations had a sharp focus, for beginning in the mid- 1890s the Navy had developed war plans against Spain. At Luce’s suggestion, the Naval War College began studying the strategic implications of a war with Spain, and in 1896 Lieutenant William W. Kimball completed a document titled “War with Spain.” Although several subsequent plans materialized, the basic features of the Kimball plan remained intact. Kimball assumed that the war would be fought to achieve independence for Cuba, that the U.S. did not contemplate major territorial acquisitions, and that command of the sea would determine the outcome. The main objective should be Spanish forces in and around Cuba, with attacks on the Philippines and Puerto Rico being secondary. Only if these assaults against the Spanish empire failed to achieve results would the Navy shift its attention to the Iberian peninsula. Kimball envisioned limited land operations only in the Caribbean, where the Army would assist Cuban rebels and perhaps attack Havana and occupy Puerto Rico. However, expeditionary forces would not be dispatched until the Navy had gained mastery in the Atlantic.

Acting in accordance with these plans, modified by public concern for coastal protection, Long and Roosevelt deployed the Navy in five squadrons. The Asiatic Squadron, commanded by George Dewey, was at

Hong Kong poised to descend on the Philippines. A Northern Patrol Squadron guarded the waters between Maine and the Delaware capes, the Auxiliary Naval Force watched numerous ports, and a Flying Squadron, based at Hampton Roads under Winfield Scott Schley, provided additional protection for the east coast. The bulk of the North Atlantic Squadron was at Key West under the command of William T. Sampson. On April 23 Sampson began a blockade of Cuba, initially concentrating on Havana, other points on the northwest coast, and Cienfuegos on the south shore, in order to prevent Spain from resupplying and reinforcing its largest troop concentration on the island. Almost all naval leaders opposed the division of the Atlantic fleet, wanting it concentrated for blockade duty and to defeat a Spanish naval relief expedition in a decisive battle. As one officer complained, the fragmentation “was the badge of democracy, the sop to the quaking laymen whose knowledge of strategy derived solely from their terror of a sudden attack by Cervera.”

Compared to the Navy’s preparations, the Army’s initial mobilization was chaotic. One problem was the diffusion of responsibility within the War Department. A second difficulty was that the Army lacked the money and streamlined procedures for advance preparations. The Army spent most of its share of the $50 million appropriation to improve the coastal fortifications. Only small amounts went to the Medical, Quartermaster, and Signal Departments. With their meager allotment, these departments began to stockpile supplies, but congressional regulations choked their activities in red tape. The Army’s greatest handicap was the belief that it would need only about 100,000 men under professional command to serve as a compact striking force for its limited overseas missions. The War Department assumed that once the Navy controlled the Caribbean, it would send a small force to secure a Cuban beachhead and perhaps dispatch smaller forces to attack other Spanish possessions. If these measures did not secure peace, then the Army might attack Havana with 50,000 men.

To meet the contingencies, the Army had Representative John A.T. Hull introduce a bill in Congress. Intended as a permanent reform, the Hull bill proposed an expansible 104,000-man Army that would eliminate the need for state manpower. The National Guard would simply garrison coastal defenses and serve as a manpower pool. Eastern Guardsmen

supported the measure, but unfortunately for the Army’s hopes for a modest but orderly mobilization, inland Guardsmen protested. Joined by southern Democrats, Populists who feared the Army, and a few regular officers with technical objections to the legislation, they defeated the Hull bill. Bowing to this strong indication that any manpower legislation must fully utilize the Guard, the administration introduced a new bill to create a volunteer army. Passed on April 22, the law permitted the president to limit an initial call-up of volunteers to National Guard members, with state quotas based on population. McKinley could appoint all volunteer staff officers and general officers, but governors would appoint lesser officers. The law also forbade states from sending new regiments into federal service under a second call unless their existing units were at full strength. With their position secure, Guardsmen did not oppose an April 26 law establishing a 65,700-man regular Army. New recruits would augment existing units and serve only for the duration of the war. As usual, the regular Army could not compete against volunteer service and remained below authorized strength.

Despite the necessity of mobilizing state volunteer regiments, the Army achieved some success in establishing an Upton-styled federally controlled volunteer force. The April 22 law authorized 3,000 federal volunteers (three cavalry regiments). Subsequent legislation established a 3,500-man brigade of federal Volunteer Engineers, a 10,000-man force of Volunteer Infantry (ten regiments in all) with presumed immunity to tropical diseases and known as the “Immunes,” and a Volunteer Signal Corps. The most famous of these federal volunteer units was the 1st United States Volunteer Cavalry, popularly known as the Rough Riders. Its commander was Colonel Leonard Wood, and its lieutenant colonel was Roosevelt, who resigned from the Navy Department. Combining the regulars and the state and federal volunteers, the Army contained 11,108 officers and 263,609 men when the war ended. All of the new troops were to be discharged upon the proclamation of peace, leaving just the 28,000-man prewar Army.

Manpower mobilization began before anyone had a clear idea of how many troops would actually be needed, and it was on a far larger scale than the War Department anticipated. Expecting McKinley to call out 60,000 Guardsmen, Army planners were shocked on April 23 when he

called for 125,000! The president wanted to avoid Lincoln’s mistake of mobilizing too few troops at the outset and hoped that the spectacle of an arming host might break Spain’s will to resist. More important, the 125,000 figure was close to existing National Guard strength. Calling out fewer troops would alienate those Guardsmen unable to volunteer, dampening martial enthusiasm and courting political disaster. In late May, with most of the initial 125,000 men in the service, McKinley called for another 75,000 volunteers, 40,000 of whom were used to fill existing regiments.

Miles proposed that volunteers remain in state camps for prolonged training, but this was impractical. Too few regulars were available to supervise training at scattered locations, troops and officers needed practice in large-scale management and maneuver, and the War Department was anxious to avoid the “disturbing influences of home locality” that interrupted serious preparations. The War Department had already ordered the regular Army concentrated at Tampa and Camp Thomas at Chickamauga Park, Tennessee; and now as fast as volunteers could be sworn into federal service (as individuals, not as units, to bypass the constitutional uncertainty about overseas service), they moved to large camps. Many joined the regulars’ encampments, while others moved to San Francisco, Key West, New Orleans, Mobile, and Camp Alger near Washington. As the Army concentrated, the War Department completed its command structure, organizing seven corps, each commanded by a major general. In June it created an eighth corps.

As in past wars, manpower mobilization preceded logistical mobilization. Combined with the magnitude of the call-up and the Guard’s lack of readiness, the emphasis on men over material created difficulties for the supply bureaus. Assurances from state and Guard officials led federal authorities to believe Guardsmen would have basic drill and musketry skills and would be equipped by the states. But the states and Guard failed to fulfill their promises. On the average, one-third to one-half of the men in peacetime Guard units refused to enlist or failed their physical examinations. The Guard regiments filling the volunteer army contained many new recruits “who fancied they were soldiers because they could get across a level piece of ground without stepping on their own feet.” Volunteers were also unequipped, streaming into the

camps without basic items such as tents and mess kits. What equipment they had was broken or obsolete. Ill-prepared in almost every respect, save for typical volunteer enthusiasm, 125,000 men arrived within six weeks of McKinley’s call.

The National Guard mobilization temporarily overwhelmed the Army’s supply capacity. Confusion should not have been unexpected, since the bureaus were geared to supply only the small peacetime Army. Moreover, line officers and civilian policymakers had not consulted the chiefs regarding mobilization plans. In coping with the crisis, the bureaus encountered fundamental problems, none of them the War Department’s fault. It took time for government arsenals and private industries to retool to manufacture large orders for specialized equipment. The number of regular staff officers was inadequate, and many newly appointed volunteer staff officers did not arrive at the camps until midsummer, requiring additional weeks to learn their jobs. Cumbersome procedures for making contracts and regulating funds, which Congress had designed to prevent peacetime fraud, inhibited the bureaus’ wartime efforts. One crippling procedural difficulty was the bureaus’ reliance on requisitions from unit commanders before forwarding supplies, which precipitated a flood of paperwork and caused interminable delays. Poor transportation facilities hindered distribution. Camps lacked adequate sidings, resulting in railroad traffic jams. A mid-1890s government economy drive had forced the Army to sell its six-mule wagons, which it now needed to move material in the sprawling camps. Finally, the bureaus’ task of simultaneously preparing small expeditions and a large volunteer force was difficult, especially since policymakers gave them no guidance on which had priority.

The War Department struggled rather successfully to overcome the logistical problems. Alger met daily with the bureau chiefs to coordinate activities and pressed for freer spending and the suspension of restricting rules. The bureaus improvised, and when one expedient failed, they tried another. Everyone labored long hours, somehow getting done what needed to get done. Chaos yielded to order, system, and purpose as arsenals and industries geared up, new staff officers learned the ropes, red tape got snipped, and transportation snarls were disentangled. Within three months material mobilization caught up with manpower

mobilization. Meanwhile, the War Department also launched expeditions on opposite sides of the globe. Considering the conditions prevailing in April and May, its achievement in equipping a quarter of a million men was remarkable. Unfortunately for Alger, the administration dispatched the expeditionary forces before the mobilization crisis had been resolved and before the improvements became apparent. Thus, to the press and public, which were caught up in the muckraking of the Progressive era, bungling and inefficiency seemed the War Department’s hallmarks.

The Spanish-American War, 1898

George Dewey hoped to attend West Point, but no vacancy was available so he went to Annapolis. Neither Civil War service nor his postwar duties distinguished him from dozens of other officers. Although he idolized Farragut, four decades of naval life gave him no opportunity to emulate his hero. One thing Dewey did was to acquire powerful friends, such as Theodore Roosevelt and Senator Redfield Proctor. His political connections gained him command of the Asiatic Squadron, which was at Hong Kong when Roosevelt’s late-February message warned Dewey to prepare for war. On April 24, when McKinley sanctioned an attack on Manila, Dewey was ready.

With orders to destroy the Spanish fleet, Dewey entered Manila Bay before dawn on May 1. His squadron had far greater firepower than Montojo’s ships, which lay at anchor off the Cavite naval base. Just as light was breaking, Dewey gave the order to fire, and in the next few hours the Asiatic Squadron demolished Spanish sea power in the Pacific with naval- review efficiency. The next day the Cavite garrison surrendered, but Spanish forces still held Manila and the rest of the Philippines. Naval power, said Dewey, could “reach no further ashore. For tenure of the land you must have the man with a rifle.” Alerted to Dewey’s predicament, the McKinley administration devised plans to send 5,000 volunteers to the Philippines.

Meanwhile, as a virtual hysteria of Dewey hero worship swept the country, strategic attention shifted from the Far East to the Caribbean, where, as in the Philippines, naval action prepared the way for Army operations. Gloomily expecting total destruction, on April 29 Cervera left the Cape Verde Islands, heading west. Thinking that Cervera would steam to San Juan, Sampson proceeded there with the bulk of his squadron. But the Spanish admiral, learning of Sampson’s movements, went to Martinique and Curaçao before steaming to Santiago Bay. By June 1

Sampson’s squadron, united with the Flying Squadron, had clamped a blockade on Santiago harbor. Although bottled up, Cervera’s ships constituted a fleet-in-being that restrained other American land and sea operations for fear they might escape. With orders not to risk his armored vessels against land batteries, Sampson could not go in and attack Cervera: Spanish forts guarded the harbor mouth, and two lines of electrical mines blocked the channel, which was so tortuous that ships could enter it only in single file. Another option was to sink a ship in the channel so that the Spaniards could not come out. Sampson tried, but the effort failed. A third course of action was to rely on Army assistance, which the Navy requested. If troops captured the forts, the Navy could sweep up the mines and venture into the harbor. While awaiting the Army’s arrival, the Navy maintained a tight blockade. To establish a nearby coaling base, Sampson sent a battalion of Marines to seize Guantanamo Bay. Aided by eighty Cuban insurgents, they captured it after four days of sporadic combat in mid-June, the first fighting by Americans on Cuban soil.

Before it received the Navy’s request, the Army’s strategic planning evolved through two stages. Initial strategy was to supply the Cubans and annoy the Spanish with small incursions. On April 29 the War Department ordered Major General William R. Shafter to Tampa, where he assumed command of the nearly all-regular 5th Corps. He was to organize a brief reconnaissance in force to the south side of Cuba, designed to carry arms and supplies to Gomez. This strategy avoided a large commitment during the rainy yellow fever season and did not make undue demands on the volunteer army. But Cervera’s departure from the Cape Verdes forced cancellation of the reconnaissance, and in its second stage Army strategy focused on Cuba’s north coast. With McKinley anxious to exert pressure on Spain, a White House conference on May 2 recommended attacking Havana with 50,000 men no later than mid-June, without regard for the rainy season. Shafter continued preparations for this new task. However, reacting to the Navy’s need for assistance, another war council again modified Army strategy, deciding on May 26 to send the 5th Corps to Santiago.

The decision set off feverish activity at Tampa. Shafter assured Washington that “I will not delay a minute longer than absolutely

necessary to get my command in condition,” but readying the command was difficult. The obese Shafter, who looked like “a floating tent,” had no experience in organizing a large force. The expedition’s size depended on the number and capacity of transports, but the quartermaster general could not find many. The Navy had acquired most available auxiliary cruisers, shallow Cuban waters precluded use of deep-draft ships, and international law forbade the transfer of foreign vessels to American registry. The Army had to rely on small, run-down coastal steamers. Tampa had only two rail connections to the north and lacked storage facilities. Railroad cars were backed up as far as Columbia, South Carolina. Boxcars reaching Tampa arrived before the bills of lading, so no one knew what they contained, and the 5th Corps had too few staff officers to sort out the mess. Only one rail line ran from Tampa to the embarkation point at Port Tampa, creating an even narrower bottleneck.

His patience worn thin by the delays, on June 7 McKinley ordered Shafter “to sail at once with what force you have ready.” The next day, after a disorganized scramble to get aboard ships, the expedition was nearly out to sea when an urgent War Department message stopped it. An erroneous report of two Spanish warships near Cuba caused the halt. For a week the Navy searched for the ghost ships while the soldiers remained on the transports, living in compartments “unpleasantly suggestive of the Black Hole of Calcutta.” The convoy finally sailed on June 14. Although expected to number 25,000 men, the expedition contained just under 17,000 soldiers, dangerously overcrowded aboard the miserable transports. The troops consisted primarily of regulars, plus the Rough Riders and two volunteer regiments.

The disembarkation might have been a disaster without assistance from the Cubans and the Navy. After conferring with Sampson and Calixto Garcia, the insurgent commander in the area, on June 22–23 Shafter landed at Daiquiri and Siboney. Although still in reasonably good health, the Americans had spent nineteen days on the transports, sweltering in blue woolen uniforms and eating unappetizing travel rations. They were not in the best condition to fight their way ashore. Fortunately, the Navy provided small boats for the landings and naval gunfire support. Moreover, Miles had initiated contact with Garcia in early April, and by mid-June cooperation between Americans and Cubans was routine. Now

Garcia’s men and the Navy’s guns drove the few and scattered defenders away from the landing beaches. The Cubans also besieged every major Spanish garrison in eastern Cuba, preventing the Spanish commander, Arsenio Linares, from reinforcing Santiago.

Shafter and Sampson held divergent views of the expedition’s purpose. The naval commander saw it as a limited operation to capture the batteries at the harbor entrance. But Shafter’s orders were discretionary, authorizing him to move against the forts or toward Santiago. The orders also specified two tasks for his command: capturing the Spanish garrison and assisting the Navy against Cervera, listed in that order. Reading between the lines, Shafter realized that the War Department expected a major land campaign, and he made Santiago his objective. Once ashore, he virtually ignored the Navy, striking obliquely inland along the road from Siboney to Santiago.

Three miles northwest of Siboney, 1,500 Spaniards occupied Las Guásimas, a strategic gap on the Santiago road. On June 24, Major General Joseph Wheeler, a former Confederate general now commanding Shafter’s dismounted cavalry division, attacked the position with 1,000 men. After a sharp fight the Spanish “retreated”; unbeknownst to the Americans, Linares had previously ordered his men to withdraw. The skirmish had several important effects. The Americans assumed they had routed the foe, and their morale soared. Control of Las Guásimas allowed the Army to reach Sevilla, the only good camp site near Santiago. Finally, the skirmish opened the way to the main enemy position just east of the city.

After Las Guásimas, Shafter planned a delay to make preparations for a final assault, but an immediate attack became essential. On June 28 he learned that Spanish reinforcements had broken through a Cuban covering force and would soon reach Santiago. Shafter had to race not only against the arrival of enemy reinforcements but also against a collapse of his logistical “system.” The entire 5th Corps relied on one lighter to move supplies from the transports to the beaches. Although food had priority, Shafter had difficulty stockpiling more than one day’s supply. Many vital items, such as medical stores, remained aboard ship. If supply from the transports to the beaches was bad, supply from the beaches to the soldiers was worse. The road to Santiago was little more than a rutted

trail. Hemmed in by the jungle, the path was barely wide enough for a single wagon and passed through deep ravines and across several unbridged streams. Streams flooded and the soil turned to mud when it rained, which it did often. Wagons got stuck and broke down, pack trains could not ford the swollen streams, and tropical diseases incapacitated teamsters and packers. Gaining access to Santiago’s wharves to ease the logistical crisis reinforced Shafter’s primary concern over enemy reinforcements, prompting him to attack sooner than he had planned.

The campaign’s one hard day of fighting came on July 1, when Shafter’s troops attacked El Caney, a hamlet to the northeast of Santiago, and the San Juan Heights, which rise along the Santiago road east of the city. Flanking the road were Kettle Hill to the north and San Juan Hill to the south. Although the enemy positions were within range of Sampson’s naval guns, Shafter did not ask the admiral for fire support.

Shafter’s attack plan unraveled from the start. Troops were slow getting into position, and some high-ranking commanders, including Shafter, were too ill to participate. El Caney’s 500 defenders tied down more than 5,000 Americans for the entire day instead of the two hours Shafter expected. Planned to commence when El Caney fell, the attack on the heights began late and took place without assistance from the division engaged at El Caney. While deploying in the jungle terrain, the two divisions assigned to storm the heights endured a galling fire that caused many casualties and demoralized the troops. The movement up Kettle and San Juan Hills was no romantic charge, with streaming flags and cheering men. A few brave soldiers led the advance into the hailstorm of Mauser bullets, which went “chug” when they found flesh. Behind these stalwarts came two single lines of men, spreading out like a fan, who drove the badly outnumbered defenders from the heights.

“Another such victory as that of July 1,” wrote correspondent Richard H. Davis, “and our troops must retreat.” Davis expressed the belief of many officers and men that the Battles of El Caney and San Juan Heights had brought the 5th Corps to the edge of disaster. After the unopposed landings and success at Las Guásimas, Americans assumed the Spanish would not fight well. The battles of July 1 proved otherwise, as enemy troops, outnumbered more than ten to one, held back the Army’s best corps for the better part of a day, inflicting 1,385 casualties. Among many

others, the normally irrepressible Roosevelt, who led the Rough Riders up Kettle Hill, felt discouraged. “We have won so far at a heavy cost, but the Spaniards fight very hard and charging these entrenchments against modern rifles is terrible,” he wrote. “We must have help—thousands of men, batteries, and food and ammunition.” Even more dismaying, El Caney and San Juan Heights were mere outposts in advance of the main defensive position.

Believing the situation was desperate, Shafter telegraphed Washington that he was considering a withdrawal to a position where he could be supplied by railroad. Preoccupied with his difficulties, the 5th Corps commander overlooked his adversary’s even worse condition. Coming on top of three years of warfare against the insurgents, the 600 Spanish casualties were a severe loss. Short of ammunition, food, and water, the Santiago garrison was near collapse. Shafter also failed to understand the implications of a retreat. Depending on a strong show of force, McKinley’s peripheral strategy could not stand such a setback. Thus Shafter’s retreat message created consternation in Washington. Although leaving the final decision to Shafter, his civilian superiors tried to stiffen the general’s resolve, urging him to hold his position, promising reinforcements, and ordering Miles to Cuba should a change in command be necessary.

On July 3, the day Shafter sent his alarming telegram, the situation changed dramatically. First, convinced that Santiago was about to capitulate, the Cuban governor general ordered Cervera to make a sortie rather than surrender. Cervera’s escape attempt surprised the blockading squadron, which was below full strength and under Schley’s immediate command. One cruiser had taken Sampson to Siboney to confer with Shafter, and other ships were refueling at Guantanamo. Still, Schley’s broadside was triple the weight of Cervera’s, and the Americans easily destroyed the enemy squadron. The victory produced no hero comparable to Dewey. An acrimonious debate soon developed over whether Sampson, who commanded the squadron, or Schley, who was in tactical control during the battle, deserved paramount credit. The squabble tainted both their reputations.

One important result of Cervera’s defeat was the Spanish government’s recall of Admiral Manuel de la Camara’s squadron. Spain had sent

Camara toward the Philippines after Dewey’s victory, creating a strategic dilemma of whether to save Dewey or maintain unchallenged superiority in the main theater of war. Including a battleship and an armored cruiser, Camara’s force would be a stern challenge for the Asiatic Squadron. With all its battleships and armored cruisers committed in the Caribbean, the Navy Department ordered two powerfully armored monitors from the west coast to Manila, but strategists worried whether they could beat Camara to the Philippines. The department also organized the Eastern Squadron from Sampson’s fleet to pursue Camara or, by attacking the Spanish coast, force his recall. However, dispatching the Eastern Squadron would weaken Sampson, perhaps allowing Cervera to escape. Fortunately, Cervera’s defeat resolved the knotty problem. Recognizing that the Battle of Santiago Bay freed the Eastern Squadron to sail without endangering Sampson, Spain recalled Camara. The Navy Department never sent the Eastern Squadron to European waters but held it in readiness, exerting pressure on Spain to come to an agreement.

July 3 was also important because even as Shafter contemplated retreat, he boldly demanded Santiago’s surrender. General Jose Toral, who replaced the wounded Linares, refused but indicated an interest in further discussions. Buoyed by Cervera’s defeat and the prospect of negotiations, Shafter wired Washington that he would not retreat. During the talks between Shafter and Toral, which went on for two weeks, the rivalry between Sampson and Shafter sank to the nadir. Shafter urged the Navy to attack the harbor entrance forts and steam into the bay, taking the Spanish garrison in the rear. Sampson would gladly oblige, if only the Army would capture the forts. Claiming he needed all his men for the siege, Shafter refused. Although the stalemate with Sampson continued, Shafter achieved a breakthrough with Toral, who formally capitulated on July 17. Since he surrendered all the troops under his command, not just those inside Santiago, Spanish resistance in eastern Cuba ended.

In his moment of glory, Shafter was petty. He allowed no naval officer to sign the capitulation document. In callous disregard of the Cubans’ contribution, he did not permit them to participate in the surrender negotiations or ceremonies. Shafter’s ungracious behavior marked the final stage in the deterioration of Cuban-American relations that began immediately after the landings. The Americans’ prewar image of the

Cuban army was that it fought in conventional style and contained many whites. But black men filled the ranks, kindling race prejudice, and without their rifles and cartridge belts the rebels “would have looked like a horde of dirty Cuban beggars and ragamuffins on the tramp.” Forgetting the privation Cuban soldiers had endured, American soldiers considered them “human vultures” when they begged or stole food and other items. Yet without the Cubans, Shafter probably could not have taken Santiago. Not only were they valuable allies in an immediate sense —helping at Guantanamo, covering the landings, preventing or delaying the arrival of reinforcements, digging trenches, and acting as scouts and guides—but they had also severely weakened Spain before America entered the war.

The day after Toral’s surrender, the War Department authorized Miles to launch his long-contemplated invasion of Puerto Rico. Departing on July 21, he landed at Guánica four days later and on August 9 launched a four-column offensive toward San Juan. Unlike Shafter’s hastily dispatched expedition, Miles’s had excellent logistical support and encountered little resistance. Events at Santiago sapped the enemy’s will to resist, the Puerto Rican militia deserted in droves, and civilians cheerfully cooperated with Miles. In six minor engagements the Americans suffered forty-one casualties before Miles received an August 12 telegram informing him that the U.S. and Spain had signed a peace protocol.

The peace message did not reach the Philippines in time to prevent a “battle” after the war was over. McKinley selected Major General Wesley Merritt to command the 5,000 volunteers that the administration planned to send to Manila. Merritt insisted that the expedition be enlarged and include regulars, and the War Department agreed, assigning him 20,000 men, including regulars. Designated the 8th Corps, the expedition assembled at San Francisco and deployed to Manila with little confusion. A more skilled administrator than Shafter, Merritt also had the advantage of time to prepare methodically and benefited from a more complete logistical mobilization. The general’s first contingent departed on May 25, captured Guam in the Spanish-held Marianas on the way, and arrived at Cavite on June 30. Another contingent left on June 15, a third later that month, and two more in July.

Merritt departed without a clear understanding of his purpose and entered into a confused political and military situation created by the presence of a Filipino army. “I do not yet know whether it is your desire,” Merritt wrote to McKinley, “to subdue and hold all of the Spanish territory in the islands, or merely seize and hold the capital.” The president’s formal instructions did not clarify the matter, although they implied an extensive campaign. The Filipino army resulted from a revolution against Spain, similar to the Cuban insurrection, that began in 1896. The Spanish had forced the revolutionary leader, Emilio Aguinaldo, into exile, but with the encouragement of Dewey and American consuls at Hong Kong and Singapore, he returned. Reorganizing his army, he soon controlled most of the Philippines, besieged Manila, issued a declaration of independence, and established an American-style Philippine Republic —all before American troops arrived. Dewey and Merritt had instructions to avoid entangling alliances with the insurgents “that would incur our liability to maintain their cause in the future.” Aguinaldo initially viewed the Americans as friends, but he became suspicious that the U.S. might annex the islands when soldiers arrived and officials refused to recognize his government.

The “Battle” of Manila exacerbated tensions between Americans and Filipinos. Knowing the futility of resistance, Governor General Don Fermin Jáudenes negotiated with Dewey and Merritt to surrender Manila after a mock battle that would save Jáudenes’s reputation and Spain’s honor. His troops would defend only the outer line of trenches and blockhouses, not the inner citadel, and would not use their heavy guns. In return the Americans agreed not to blast Manila with naval gunfire and to keep the Filipinos out of the city, for Jáudenes feared they might retaliate for past Spanish atrocities. After this collusion with an enemy against a presumed friend, the play unfolded pretty much according to the script. Some fighting occurred along the outer defenses, but the Spanish caused less trouble than the betrayed insurgents. Serious conflict threatened when Filipinos spontaneously joined in the attack and occupied several suburbs. However, both sides wanted to avoid an open break, and at the end of the day Americans controlled most of the city. But they faced outward, surrounded by angry Filipinos demanding joint occupation.

Hostile Americans and Filipinos still glared at each other on August 16 when word arrived that the war had ended four days earlier.

Aftermath of the “Splendid Little War”

As prewar strategists predicted, the war at sea was decisive. When Spain signed the August 12 protocol its main garrisons at San Juan, Havana, and Manila were intact, but with the losses at Manila Bay and Santiago Bay they could no longer be maintained. Under the protocol’s terms, hostilities ended, Spain granted Cuban independence and ceded Puerto Rico and Guam, and the combatants agreed to decide the Philippines’ fate at a postwar peace conference, which began at Paris on October 1. The United States had many options regarding the islands: Grant independence, return them to Spain, acquire only a naval base, annex only Luzon, establish some form of protectorate, or annex the entire archipelago. For moral, economic, political, and military reasons, McKinley decided on complete annexation, and by the Treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898, Spain ceded the Philippines.

The decision to annex the Philippines touched off a wave of protest, spearheaded by the Anti-Imperialist League. Most anti-imperialists were not against expansion, favoring acquisitions within the Western Hemisphere and the retention of naval bases elsewhere. But the annexation of a distant, sprawling archipelago inhabited by diverse and alien peoples aroused their opposition, for it represented a clear break with past policies. The U.S. had never acquired territory that could not be eventually admitted as states, and if it meddled in the Far East, it could not reasonably forbid others from meddling in the Americas. Defending the colony would be difficult and costly, creating a large military establishment and leading to militarism abroad and despotism at home. A huge land grab tarnished the crusade to liberate Cuba. Despite these arguments, on February 6, 1899, the Senate consented to the treaty. Spain and the U.S. exchanged ratifications on April 11, 1899.

“No war in history,” exalted one American, “has accomplished so much in so short a time with so little loss.” The United States acquired a colonial empire, annexing Puerto Rico, Guam, and the Philippines and establishing a limited protectorate over Cuba. During the imperial

outburst, it also annexed Hawaii, Samoa, and Wake Island. A nation born more than a century earlier in a reaction to imperial domination had become an imperial power, joining the maelstrom of international politics. During the 1880s, Europeans spoke of six great powers (France, Germany, England, Russia, Austria-Hungary, Italy). They now added a seventh, computing the United States into balance-of-power combinations. A German cartoon expressed the new sentiment, showing Uncle Sam reaching out to encircle the globe, saying, “I can’t quite reach around—but that may come later.”

Yet for the Army it had been far from “a splendid little war,” as Secretary of State John Hay called it. A storm of controversy caused by medical disasters in the 5th Corps and in the volunteer camps engulfed the War Department as the war ended. The death toll explained the calamity’s magnitude: Out of 5,462 deaths in the armed services in 1898, only 379 resulted from combat. The 5th Corps’ ordeal was severe. During the siege men lay in their tents, which were steaming mudholes during downpours and ovens when the sun blazed down, without adequate food. Exhausted and filthy, they were susceptible to disease even as the opening of Santiago Bay remedied their material deficiencies. Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid began their death march through the ranks. The Americans also greatly feared an outbreak of yellow fever, although doubts remain as to whether it actually afflicted any of the troops.

By late July almost a quarter of the men were sick, and so many died that Shafter suspended rifle volleys and bugle calls at burials for fear of undermining morale. On August 3, with the concurrence of his general officers and medical staff, Shafter finally alerted the War Department, writing that he commanded “an army of convalescents.” The corps must be immediately transferred home, or it would perish. When the news leaked to the press, it further discredited the War Department, already under mounting criticism for its seeming ineptitude in preparing for war, threatened to undermine the peace negotiations then underway, and hastened the corps’ withdrawal to Camp Wikoff at Montauk Point, New York. By August 25 the veterans had departed, replaced by volunteer regiments and “Immunes” who, as it turned out, were not immune.

The survivors arrived at Montauk “mere shadows of their former selves,” with pale faces, sunken eyes, staggering gaits, and emaciated

forms, many of them candidates for premature graves. They wobbled ashore into a welter of confusion. Alger had planned a reception camp before he received Shafter’s August 3 report, and given enough time a fine facility would have awaited the troops. But the sudden emergency caught the camp with inadequate transportation and shortages of equipment, medical supplies, and laborers. As during the mobilization in April and May, the War Department’s heroic efforts, plus the goodwill of private relief agencies, resulted in rapid improvements. However, the press and private citizens had flooded into the camp in its early weeks and spread tales of suffering, convincing citizens that the government had neglected the victors of Santiago.

Events in the volunteer camps reinforced the belief that the War Department had ill-used its soldiers. Most volunteers remained in camp for the duration, bored and homesick, engaging in endless military routine, enduring shortages of all types since overseas expeditions had supply priority, and wallowing in pervasive filth caused by their own carelessness and indiscipline. Under these conditions epidemic diseases swept the camps. In combating them, the Medical Department labored under crippling handicaps. It had little prestige or authority, low priority in terms of men and money, too few trained personnel, no power to enforce its recommendations (which were often excellent but ignored by the volunteers), and, like medical science as a whole, it did not know how the killer diseases were transmitted. Only when the crisis was at hand did the Army react, rushing doctors and supplies to the camps and ordering a massive redeployment that placed the men in healthful new camps where officers enforced strict cleanliness. The improvements, plus the onset of winter, rapidly dropped the disease mortality rate, but the public did not easily forget the sight of hundreds of men dying on home soil.

Demobilization and an investigation of the War Department’s alleged mismanagement began almost simultaneously. In October Shafter formally disbanded the 5th Corps, and in May 1899 the last of the original seven corps was demobilized. Spurred by the outcry caused by the Army’s chaotic mobilization and the tragedies in the 5th Corps and the volunteer camps, on September 26 McKinley appointed a commission, chaired by Grenville M. Dodge, to investigate Army administration. The commission questioned numerous witnesses, including Alger, the bureau chiefs,

officers of every grade, enlisted men, nurses, and concerned citizens. Miles was the most spectacular witness, charging that troops had been fed beef injected with harmful chemicals, causing much of the sickness. The commission thoroughly studied the “embalmed beef” issue and, when it reported on February 9, 1899, correctly pronounced Miles’s accusations as false. When Miles persisted in his charges, McKinley appointed a military board of inquiry that came to the same conclusion.

The Dodge report also exonerated the War Department of charges of stupidity, deliberate negligence, and major corruption, drawing a picture of conscientious officers struggling “with earnestness and energy” to overcome problems primarily not of their own making. However, it did indict the department for excess paperwork and declared, in a tactful criticism of Alger, that “there was lacking in the general administration of the War Department . . . that complete grasp of the situation which was essential to the highest efficiency and discipline of the Army.” Although Alger was not a strong secretary, and inefficiency and poor coordination dogged the war effort, the real causes of the War Department’s difficulties were the hasty mobilization of too many men, primitive medical knowledge, and the country’s long neglect of the Army.

Most citizens found the Dodge report’s detailed analysis of staff organization and Army administration boring and did not want the facts to interfere with their perceptions. They were sure something was rotten in the War Department, and Alger became the scapegoat; “Algerism” became synonymous with government corruption and incompetence. Despite the public’s lack of confidence in the secretary, McKinley owed Alger a moral debt, knowing that he had loyally followed orders and was taking the blame for decisions imposed upon him. McKinley also worried that firing Alger would be an admission of military mismanagement, which would reflect badly on his presidency. Not until Alger sided with an anti-administration senatorial candidate did McKinley ask for his resignation; on August 1, 1899, Elihu Root replaced him. The widespread sentiment that the war had been conducted unscientifically, the lack of interservice cooperation, and the new international responsibilities allowed Root to institute Army reforms.

Most of the overseas acquisitions posed few problems. The Navy Department governed Samoa, Guam, and Wake without difficulty. Puerto

Rico remained under military government only until May 1900, when the first American civil governor assumed his duties, and Hawaii was quickly placed on the road to eventual statehood. But Cuba was different. The United States had never recognized the Cuban Republic. Now the question was whether it should grant independence, establish a protectorate, or annex the island despite the Teller Amendment, which imperialists argued had been a great mistake. While the nation wrestled with this problem, Cuba remained under military government, headed by Major General John R. Brooke until December 1899, when Wood succeeded him. Wood tried to Americanize the island, hoping to pave the way for eventual annexation. A man of great administrative talent and imbued with Progressive ideals, he did much to rebuild the devastated island and restore its economy, and he promoted reforms in education, municipal government, the legal system, and sanitation and health care. Although his emphasis on centralization and urban development ran counter to the Cubans’ desire for more local autonomy and rural traditions, many of Wood’s programs were of lasting value.

In May 1902 the United States recognized Cuban independence. Expansionists could not overcome the idealism expressed in the Teller Amendment or the fear that Cubans might rebel against annexation. However, the U.S. established a semiprotectorate and maintained de facto dominance through the Platt Amendment and the Reciprocal Trade Treaty of 1902. Incorporated into the Cuban constitution, the amendment was a compromise between altruism and annexation, allowing Cuban internal self-government while protecting America’s special interests. It forbade Cuba to sign treaties that might infringe its independence, limited its capacity to get into debt, preserved America’s right to intervene to maintain stability, and forced Cuba to sell or lease naval stations to the U.S. The trade treaty tied Cuba’s principal export, sugar, to the American market, thus giving the United States considerable economic influence.

Cuba, however, was not the most troublesome of the overseas possessions, for in annexing the Philippines the United States annexed a war.

War in the Philippines, 1899–1902

“Is Government willing to use all means to make the natives submit to the authority of the United States?” Merritt and Dewey asked Washington as the Filipinos pressed for the joint occupation of Manila. McKinley replied that there must be no joint occupation, that the insurgents must recognize U.S. authority, and that Merritt could “use whatever means in your judgment are necessary to this end.” The president realized that war was possible, although he sincerely wanted to avoid fighting the Filipinos. While awaiting the outcome of the Paris peace conference, the Filipinos also prepared for war. Merritt’s successor, Elwell S. Otis, convinced the Filipinos to withdraw from the suburbs they had occupied, but Aguinaldo’s men strengthened their besieging positions and their sandatahan (militia) inside Manila. In this festering situation the American troops began referring to Filipinos with derogatory terms, such as “niggers” and “gugus,” and the number of violent incidents increased.

Since the United States was determined to exercise sovereignty and the Filipinos were equally determined to be independent, the Treaty of Paris created an impasse solvable only through war. Fighting began on the night of February 4–5, 1899, along the Manila perimeter. Aided by gunfire from Dewey’s squadron and gunboats on the Pasig River, the next morning the Army attacked, driving the Filipinos from their trenches after several days of combat. Later in the month the Manila sandatahan rose in rebellion, but the Americans quashed it. In March and April, Otis launched attacks north and east from Manila, continually defeating the Filipinos. Aguinaldo favored guerrilla warfare but one of his generals, the European-educated Antonio Luna, persuaded him to fight in conventional style; this ill-suited the Filipinos, who lacked artillery and sufficient modern rifles. However, Otis’s spring offensive achieved few permanent results before the rainy season began in May, halting large- scale campaigning.

As Otis waited for better weather he confronted severe problems. The Eighth Corps had an unprecedented task, for Americans had never before engaged in a colonial war of conquest. The Indian wars were not analogous: Indian resistance was always on a smaller scale, and the Army had the assistance of railroads, settlers, and buffalo hunters. Once defeated, Indians could be confined to reservations, but no Philippine reservation system was feasible. For pacification to succeed, the Army had not only to defeat Aguinaldo’s army but also to make Filipinos want American rule or at least tolerate it peacefully. But the proper mix between coercion and benevolence was not easily discovered.

Another difficulty was that Otis underestimated Aguinaldo’s support, the fierce resentment against Americans, and the Filipinos’ fighting skills. Consequently, he sent Washington optimistic assessments that slowed the necessary troop buildup. After ratification of the Treaty of Paris most of his soldiers were eligible for discharge, and McKinley insisted they be returned home as soon as possible. Foreseeing this demobilization, the administration introduced a bill calling for a 100,000-man regular Army. On March 2, 1899, Congress passed a bill keeping the regular Army at 65,000 but authorizing the president to enlist 35,000 volunteers, organized into twenty-five regiments and recruited from the country at large, for the Philippine emergency. The volunteer enlistments expired July 1, 1901; on the same date the regular Army would shrink to 28,000.

In contrast to his actions during the war with Spain, McKinley wanted the force sent to the Philippines kept “within actual military needs.” For immediate reinforcements he dispatched regular regiments. But since Otis claimed he needed only 30,000 men, which could be drawn entirely from regulars, the president delayed organizing the volunteers. Responding to an upward revision by Otis, in late June McKinley authorized the creation of twelve volunteer regiments, and another increased estimate from Otis soon prompted organization of the remainder. Largely due to his own misjudgment, Otis endured what Washington and Scott had experienced: exchanging one army for another in the face of the enemy. Fortunately, War Department procedures perfected during the war with Spain permitted the expeditious shipment of well-equipped volunteers; by February 1900 all of them were in the Philippines.

In November 1899, as the first volunteer regiments arrived, Otis attacked Aguinaldo’s main army on the Luzon plains, shattered it, and drove Aguinaldo into northern Luzon’s mountainous wilderness. Otis then sent a secondary thrust into Cavite Province and the Laguna de Bay region, which fragmented the Filipino forces there. As soldiers marched over Luzon from one end to the other and then occupied virtually every other island of consequence in the archipelago, Otis reported to Washington that “we no longer deal with organized insurrection, but brigandage.”

While smashing the Filipinos’ conventional forces the Army also instituted civic action programs similar to Wood’s in Cuba. Wanting Filipinos to “bless the American republic,” McKinley ordered the Army to prove “to them that the mission of the United States is one of benevolent assimilation, substituting the mild sway of justice and right for arbitrary rule.” Recognizing the value of benevolence as a pacification technique, officers undertook the task with enthusiasm. Beginning in Manila and then fanning outward, they inaugurated reforms, especially in transportation, education, and public health, to convince the Filipinos that the Americans would raise their standard of living. New railroads, bridges, highways, and telegraph and telephone lines strengthened the economy and forged a new interdependence among the islands. Convinced that education “can be more beneficial than troops in preventing future revolutions,” the Army created a school system, which reduced illiteracy. The military’s public-health assault on disease virtually eliminated smallpox and the plague and reduced the infant mortality rate. Although conducted with an arrogant ethnocentrism and often interfering with local customs, these (and other) programs gained an increasing number of Filipino collaborators, reinforcing Otis’s perception that the war was over.

But instead of being over, the war entered a new phase. With their army shattered, the Filipinos turned to guerrilla warfare to counter America’s conventional firepower. Although they had used guerrilla tactics before, these now became the primary means of resistance. What Otis thought was the enemy’s collapse was simply a reorganization into small units at the local level. Instead of a single nationalist struggle directed by one commander, Aguinaldo, the conflict became decentralized, a

collection of local conflicts that varied from region to region depending on ethnic and religious differences, the terrain, and the revolutionary leadership’s caliber. During this phase local guerrilla officers were much like Andrew Jackson during the War of 1812, acting like regional warlords who obeyed higher authorities only when it suited their region’s needs. Most leaders came from the economic and political elite rather than the masses; many of the latter loathed Americans but also had scant enthusiasm for a war directed by the prewar Filipino upper class, which had demonstrated little interest in social justice or land redistribution.

In some cases guerrilla warfare merged with the traditional banditry that Filipino ladrones had perpetrated since time immemorial, the political “cause” of independence merely providing a cover for age-old practices. Indeed, many U.S. Army officers initially underestimated the guerrilla threat because they blamed the endemic violence wholly on ladrones and other social outcasts. Yet leading Filipinos such as Aguinaldo and Miguel Malvar, a high-ranking officer in Batangas Province, understood guerrilla- warfare techniques and strategy. They believed that a protracted war might result in two possible favorable outcomes. It might undermine the morale of the American Army and populace, leading to victory for the anti-imperialist Democratic Party in the presidential election of 1900. Filipino propagandists attached great importance to this eventuality. As one American officer noted, the insurgents watched American politics closely, and “every disloyal sentiment uttered by a man of prominence in the United States is repeatedly broadcast through the islands and greatly magnified.” Or the Filipinos might receive foreign aid, perhaps from a European nation but more likely from Chinese republicans or Japanese pan-Asianists.

Guerrillas increasingly fought only when victory was certain, usually ambushing small patrols. When confronted by a superior force they hid their weapons and dispersed to their homes, where they greeted Americans with a friendly smile and a hearty “Amigo!” They also engaged in sniping and sabotage, inflicted hideous tortures on prisoners, and set trail-way traps, such as pits filled with sharpened stakes. Soldiers learned that a “pacified” area extended no further than the range of a Krag- Jorgensen.

While their guerrilla operations nullified America’s earlier military success, the insurgents employed terrorism to defeat what they called the enemy’s “policy of attraction.” Directed primarily against Filipinos holding positions in American-sponsored municipal governments, terrorism (the guerrillas called it “exemplary punishment on traitors to prevent the people of the towns from unworthily selling themselves for the gold of the invader”) took many forms. Lucky “traitors” were fined or had their property destroyed; unlucky ones were hacked to death with bolos or buried alive. To mete out punishment and control the villagers, the insurgents established shadow governments in the barrios. Many officials who worked openly with the Americans for civic improvements also worked secretly for the insurgents, spying on their townsmen, collecting taxes, recruiting men, and supplying information. The system of terror and invisible governments was successful in many locales, where fewer and fewer people cooperated with the Americans.

The deteriorating situation provoked an ugly reaction among some American soldiers, who committed atrocities such as torturing prisoners. Official policy forbade these cruelties. But authorities argued, with some plausibility, that the very nature of guerrilla warfare led to excesses, and imperialists insisted that anti-imperialists exaggerated troop misconduct for political purposes; indeed, the number of verifiable atrocities was only fifty-seven. However, since soldiers do not publicize their illegal acts, the actual number of misdeeds was certainly higher.

By May 1900, when Arthur MacArthur succeeded Otis, the military situation had become frustrating. Although the Americans were not in immediate danger of losing the war, the guerrillas were holding their own and Filipino terror sapped much of the civic action program’s appeal. Furthermore, although MacArthur needed more troops, he was obliged to send men to China to help suppress the anti-Christian and antiforeign Boxer Rebellion. When the Boxers besieged the Legation Quarter in Peking, McKinley ordered U.S. forces to participate, for the first time, in an international relief expedition. He wanted to save the beleaguered Americans in the Legation Quarter and to protect national interests as expressed in the “Open Door” policy, which called for equal trade privileges in China for the major European powers, Japan, and the United States, as well as the maintenance of Chinese sovereignty. A small naval

squadron assembled and the U.S. committed 10,000 men commanded by Adna R. Chaffee to the relief force, which included troops from several European nations, Russia, and Japan. Prior to the legations’ mid-August relief, Secretary of War Root got 5,000 troops to China, and more were on the way. Some went directly from the U.S. and others from Cuba, but many came from MacArthur’s command. When the crisis ended Root ordered those soldiers en route to China to proceed to Manila instead, and most of the men already in China eventually followed them.

Meanwhile the American position in the islands had deteriorated. Making matters ever more difficult, at least from MacArthur’s perspective, was the arrival of the Taft Commission, headed by William Howard Taft. McKinley ordered the commission to establish civil government in the Philippines, and in September 1900 it began exercising legislative authority, while MacArthur exercised executive power. Since the president had failed to define the division of authority between MacArthur and Taft, jurisdictional squabbles soon arose.

Unlike Otis, MacArthur realistically assessed the war and devised an appropriate strategy that combined “a more rigid policy” toward guerrillas, greater efforts to protect the civilian population from insurgent terrorism, and continuing benevolence. In December 1900 he invoked General Orders No. 100. Issued during the Civil War, the orders had gained international acceptance as an ethical code for the conduct of warfare. War should be fought in conventional style between uniformed armies; guerrillas deserved little mercy, being subject to imprisonment, deportation, or execution. Although an army should respect the rights of civilians, two loopholes—“military necessity” and “retaliation”—allowed commanders to employ harsh measures against those who continued to resist. MacArthur also insisted on vigorous offensive action, and to carry it out his troop strength approached 70,000 by early 1901. Before the 1899 enlistments expired, Congress passed a bill in February 1901 increasing the regular Army to 100,000 men. For the second time a veteran volunteer force departed while a new force, this one of regulars, arrived. But close coordination between MacArthur and the War Department allowed the drawdown and buildup to occur simultaneously without hindering the war effort.

MacArthur also pursued an old Indian-fighting tactic by recruiting pro- American Filipinos, emphasized military intelligence, and called on the Navy for greater assistance. Otis had recruited a few Philippine scout companies but MacArthur expanded the program to compensate for the Americans’ inadequate knowledge of local languages, customs, and terrain. As had many officers in the American west who had worked with Indian scouts, MacArthur turned to indigenous soldiers reluctantly. By June 1901 he had organized 5,400 scouts (plus 6,000 Filipino police who performed semimilitary duties), but the February 1901 Army Act had authorized more than double that number. The Army organized a Division of Military Information in Manila to collect and disseminate timely intelligence data. MacArthur asked the Navy to intensify its patrolling to sever the insurgents’ interisland communications and the flow of arms from abroad.

While stressing more vigorous military measures, MacArthur realized that government based on force alone was not sufficient, that permanent pacification required the consent of the governed. Thus he continued the benevolent action program. To nurture pro-American sentiment, officials formed the Filipino Federal Party, which offered a political alternative to Aguinaldo’s independence movement. Working closely with the Taft Commission, the new party organized village committees to combat the influence of the guerrillas’ shadow governments and helped to pave the way for civil rule.

Between the fall of 1900 and the spring of 1901, the guerrillas suffered three stunning blows. In a spirited campaign in which anti-imperialists accused him of conducting an undeclared (and hence unconstitutional) war of “bare-faced, cynical conquest,” McKinley won reelection against anti-imperialist William Jennings Bryan. His victory demoralized the guerrillas, who could no longer hope that America would soon withdraw. With carefully calculated timing, MacArthur then initiated his stiffer policy. Instead of releasing guerrilla leaders, the Americans deported, imprisoned, or executed them. In the field, Army patrols hounded insurgent bands, allowing them no rest or sanctuary and isolating them from their village bases, where larger and better-organized garrisons provided security. Finally, in March 1901 General Frederick Funston, leading a company of Filipino scouts, staged a daring raid that captured

Aguinaldo. The next month Aguinaldo issued a proclamation accepting American sovereignty and calling on his compatriots to end resistance. Thousands of guerrillas began surrendering monthly, while others simply gave up the fight and went home. By summer only two sizable guerrilla units remained active, Malvar’s in Batangas and Vicente Lukban’s on Samar.

Capitalizing on the insurgent collapse, on July 1 McKinley transferred executive authority from the military governor to civil authority, designating Taft as the civil governor; legislative power remained with the commission, which now included three Filipinos. Concurrently, Chaffee replaced MacArthur as commanding general and continued to exercise control in the remaining unpacified areas. One of the civil government’s first acts was to establish a Philippine Constabulary, officered by Americans but manned by Filipinos and separate from the Army’s scouts and the municipal police. By January 1902 the constabulary had 3,000 enlisted men, who maintained order in pacified regions and allowed the Army to concentrate where guerrilla bands were still active.

The final pacification campaigns on Samar and in Batangas were brutal. The ghastly massacre of a U.S. infantry company at Balangiga, Samar, in September 1901 whipped Americans into a vengeful fury. Chaffee believed that “false humanitarianism” was responsible for the massacre; now, he said, if the troops followed his instructions “they will start a few cemeteries for hombres in Southern Samar.” The commanding general gave the pacification task to Jacob H. Smith, known for good reason as “Hell Roarin’ Jake.” Smoke from burning villages and crops marked the progress of Smith’s troops on the island. Meanwhile Chaffee ordered J. Franklin Bell to pacify Batangas. Believing that “it is an inevitable consequence of war that the innocent must generally suffer with the guilty,” Bell rigidly enforced General Orders No. 100 and kept up to 4,000 troops scouring the province, fighting Malvar’s men, destroying crops and livestock, and herding more than 300,000 civilians into concentration zones. “General Bell does not propose to starve these people as Weyler did the Cuban reconcentrados,” editorialized a pro- administration newspaper, and imperialists echoed the theme. But one commander called the zones “suburbs of hell,” and widespread suffering

occurred in them as people lived without adequate food and shelter and thousands died of disease.

By April 1902, Lukban and Malvar had surrendered and Samar and Batangas had been pacified. These final campaigns were atypical of the pacification effort, which, like the Filipinos’ guerrilla warfare, varied from place to place. While none were pretty, no previous regional pacification efforts rivaled this late-war ugliness.

However, persistent charges throughout the war that American troops had committed atrocities, reinforced by the Samar and Batangas episodes, provoked an anti-imperialist backlash and prompted Senator George F. Hoar to request a special investigating committee. The Republican majority persuaded him that the Senate’s standing committee on the Philippines should undertake the investigation. Chaired by the imperialist Henry Cabot Lodge, who had faint patience with those who criticized American soldiers, the committee held sporadic hearings between January and June 1902. The committee ensured that friendly witnesses predominated, badgered hostile witnesses, barred the public, issued no final report, and allowed only pet reporters access to its findings. The hearings did expose some instances of American misconduct, as even friendly witnesses sometimes made damaging admissions, but Lodge was generally successful in limiting the investigation’s scope in order to prevent a full-scale review of the administration’s war policy, and the antiwar furor quickly subsided. An era of romantic nationalism made sustained criticism of the nation’s “duty” to spread civilization difficult, and most Americans had trouble remaining morally indignant about events seven thousand miles away involving a nonwhite race. People also found it difficult to criticize success, and on July 4, 1902, President Roosevelt proclaimed a successful end to the war.

The United States had crushed Aguinaldo’s dream of an independent republic. The successful conquest resulted from a combination of strong military force and wise political action. As American soldiers soundly defeated the guerrillas, benevolence and the Federal Party won popular support. The Americans swiftly integrated the revolutionary leadership into the civil government, while the constabulary, assisted by the scouts and the greatly reduced American garrisons, maintained peace. But the cost had been high. The financial tab was $400 million, twenty times the

price paid to Spain for the islands. More than 125,000 troops saw service, of whom approximately 4,200 died (approximately 1,000 of them in action) and another 2,900 were wounded. Approximately 20,000 Filipino soldiers also died.

Combatants were not the only ones who suffered. Civilians in certain regions, such as Batangas, endured a demographic catastrophe for which the war was only partly responsible. An outbreak of rinderpest (a disease that killed cattle and carabaos) not only reduced the number of agricultural workbeasts but also compelled malaria-carrying mosquitoes that preferred bovine-blood meals to bite humans instead. The workbeast shortage and wartime disruptions reduced rice production, so the people ate imported thiamine-deficient polished rice rather than nutritious home- grown varieties. Malnourishment weakened their immune systems, making the populace unusually susceptible to malaria and other potentially fatal diseases. Bell’s concentration policy fueled the death rate, since microparasites were rapidly transmitted from one host to another in the overcrowded conditions.

Although most officers wholeheartedly embraced the war, a few questioned its justness and wisdom. One general referred to it as an “unholy war” and another believed that the United States had “ruthlessly suppressed in the Philippines an insurrection better justified than was our Revolution of glorious memory.” Others feared that expansion weakened rather than strengthened American security, and the question of how to defend the islands baffled strategists for decades to come. Even Teddy Roosevelt soon perceived that the Philippines were America’s “heel of Achilles.”

TEN

Building the Military Forces of a World Power, 1899–1917

With uncharacteristic restraint, Theodore Roosevelt assessed American military policy at the dawn of a new century: “I believe we intend to build up a good navy, but whether we build up even a respectable little army or not I do not know; and if we fail to do so, it may well be that a few years hence . . . we shall have to learn a bitter lesson. . . .” Even though he had more insight into world politics than most of his countrymen, Roosevelt could not have predicted in 1900 that in less than two decades the United States would be embroiled in a world war or even that the nation would enter that war with standing forces beyond the imagination of policymakers in the nineteenth century.

However inadequate those forces were, they represented a fundamental change in American policy. The shift in policy produced an essential dependence upon a standing battlefleet to protect the United States from foreign invasion and reduced dependence upon coastal defense artillery and fortifications, backed by military forces. It also increased dependence upon the Navy and the regular Army for military tasks beyond the continental United States. At the same time, the political elite gained increased confidence in the skill and political neutrality of the Army and Navy officer corps and became more willing to institutionalize military advice and accept military professionalism as compatible with civilian control. Both groups shared an interest in the reform of the militia as the nation’s reserve force for land operations and the creation of federal reserve forces for both naval and military mobilization in case of a major

war. They also urged the accelerated application of new technology to military operations, especially improved ordnance, the internal combustion engine, the airplane, and electronic communications. The reasons for increased American military preparedness in the early twentieth century can be reconstructed with some certainty. The nation’s political elite feared that great power international competition (largely, but not completely, economic) had increased the likelihood of war. Imperial rivalries around the globe threatened to involve any number of major nations. Although such rivalries were hardly new, the introduction of efficient steam-powered warships and large passenger liners and merchant vessels made transoceanic military operations a possibility. In an era of rampant nationalism when “insults” to the flag, the destruction of private property, and physical assault upon foreign citizens could stir both elite and popular demands for punitive military action, small conflicts in Asia, Africa, and Latin America became more common and carried the seeds of larger wars. Imperial rivalries over the creation and protection of colonies offered similar perils.

The cornerstone of American military policy remained, however, the defense of the United States. Unlike their European contemporaries, American policymakers did not worry excessively about land invasions, since the United States enjoyed amicable relations with Great Britain, which meant that the Canadian border did not require more than routine policing. Mexico until 1910 was ruled by a friendly dictator, Porfirio Diaz; when his regime collapsed, so too did the Mexican armed forces. Even though the Mexican revolutionaries bore no love for the United States, they used their limited military forces against one another with few exceptions. Whatever major threats the United States faced had to come from the sea and from naval powers like Great Britain, Germany, and Japan. The worst threat (but least likely) was that a major power would launch a naval assault, perhaps accompanied by a limited land campaign, against a major American seaport city like San Francisco or New York and then hold the city for diplomatic advantage. The more likely threat was that a major power would penetrate the northern half of the Western Hemisphere, a fear traditionally expressed in the Monroe Doctrine. In specific geographic terms, American policymakers worried about the newly annexed Hawaiian Islands, the Isthmus of Panama, where they

intended to build a canal, and the unstable nations of the Caribbean. They saw Alaska as relatively safe, since its weather and terrain made it unappealing to foreign powers searching for bases. Revolutionary Mexico drew more concern because various Mexican factions flirted with Germany as a source of military support against possible American intervention.

The defense of the continental United States, then, seemed to rest on the ability to mount immediate military operations to defend Hawaii, the Canal Zone, and Puerto Rico or to preempt any foreign power that attempted to establish a new military presence in places like the Virgin Islands, Cuba, Haiti, and the Dominican Republic. Entangled with issues of economic advantage, republican sentiment, and the belief in national self-determination, the policy of the United States toward nations of the hemisphere did not rest entirely upon military considerations. Nevertheless, it required military forces that did not depend upon mobilization and formal declarations of war. Therefore, the American government had to assume that military action beyond the nation’s borders—whether those operations were limited or became the opening moves of a general war—would require larger and more effective regular forces. One of the primary concerns of American defense policy before World War I became the creation of a ready reserve force that could be sent beyond the nation’s borders.

American military policy in the Far East had two challenges: The defense of the newly annexed Philippine Islands and support of the “Open Door” diplomacy designed to preserve the political and territorial integrity of China. In the face of European competition and the militancy of a modernizing Japan, the two concerns were linked. Although American policymakers viewed Russia, Great Britain, and Germany as diplomatic problems in Asia, they were most concerned with Japan, especially after the Japanese upset the balance of power by signing a mutual security treaty with Great Britain in 1902 and then defeated Russia in the war of 1904–1905. Adopting British and German military equipment and techniques but grafting these modern military capabilities upon modified samurai traditions, Japan defined its new international role as one of economic expansion in China and the liberation of Asia from European (and American) colonialism. The mistreatment of Japanese

immigrants in the United States provided an additional irritant. The United States, on the other hand, viewed itself as the champion of an independent and reformed China. It also had no intention of surrendering the Philippines to another foreign power, Asian or not, particularly after making sizable financial, human, and emotional investments in governing the islands. American imperial impulses—a strange amalgam of humanitarianism and cultural arrogance—dictated that the future of China and the Philippines follow an American path.

The difficulty with backing the “Open Door” policy with military forces stationed in the Philippines and China was that the national stake in Asia did not seem worth the cost. At least, so it seemed to a substantial portion of Congress, the attentive public, and the officer corps of the Army and Navy. Since the United States could not find a suitable way to divest itself of the Philippines or to sever its missionary and economic ties with China, it faced an unsolvable strategic problem: How could it extend its limited military forces-in-being across six thousand miles of ocean to defend interests its citizens probably regarded as insufficient to fight for? The “Philippine problem” was to distress military planners for decades to come.

The Rise of American Military Strength 1899–1917

Department of the Navy

  EXPENDITURES (IN MILLIONS)

STRENGTH NAVY STRENGTH MARINE CORPS

MAJOR COMBATANT VESSELS*

1899 $64 16,354 3,142 36

1904 $102 32,158 7,584 29

1908 $118 42,322 9,236 62

1912 $135 51,357 9,696 64

1916 $153 60,376 10,601 77

War Department

  EXPENDITURES (IN MILLIONS)**

STRENGTH U.S. ARMY

STRENGTH NATIONAL GUARD

1899 $299 80,670 100,000 est.  

1904 $165 70,387 115,937  

1908 $175 76,942 111,000  

1912 $184 92,121 121,852  

1916 $183 108,399 132,194  

*Battleships and cruisers with 6-inch or larger main batteries. Monitors not included. **Civil projects by the Corps of Engineers included in the budget.

The United States probably would have had to readjust its military policies without the war with Spain in 1898 and the territorial annexations that accompanied the war, but the nation’s imperial spasm dramatized both the utility of military force and the nation’s relative unpreparedness to face any state more formidable than Spain. The defense of the Philippines and the Caribbean (and the projected canal) demanded that military reform come quickly. Certainly, the new possessions complicated defense planning and forced the pace of naval expansion and the emphasis on ready land forces. The result was two decades of accelerated military change.

Building a Great Power Navy

Halfway through the nation’s two-decade drive toward “a Navy second to none,” President Theodore Roosevelt in 1907–1909 sent the American “Great White Fleet” on a dramatic, globe-circling cruise. Although the voyage had some bearing upon America’s disputes with Japan and the president’s request for more battleships, the cruise had greater symbolic purposes. Although TR’s sixteen battleships did not send up the appropriate signal flags, the message to the world could not have been clearer: The United States had come of age as a world naval power and viewed the battlefleet as the nation’s first line of defense and primary military instrument of great power diplomacy.

Like its potential adversaries, the United States Navy was a battleship navy. By the outbreak of World War I, the American battlefleet, which had undergone both modernization and expansion, was superior to all other naval forces except the Royal Navy and the German High Seas Fleet. From a force of eleven battleships in 1898, the battleline of the U.S. fleet had increased to thirty-six vessels by 1913. With fluctuations tied to

congressional perceptions of the available money and the international situation, American battleship building held a relatively steady course for almost twenty years. During Roosevelt’s administration, Congress normally authorized at least two new battleships a year. It cut the program to one ship only once and often authorized as many as four (and once five) new vessels. During the presidencies of William Howard Taft and Woodrow Wilson the authorizations up to 1916 focused on replacing the older battleships at a rate of one or two a year, which stabilized battleship numbers but increased the fleet’s capability.

Battleship construction in the same period reflected the quickening pace of technological progress, especially in the strength of armor plating, the fabrication of heavy naval guns, the destructiveness of explosives, and the power of marine engines. Battleships became larger, more lethal, and more expensive. In size American battleships began the century in the 10,000- to 15,000-ton range but reached 31,000 tons in 1914; their cost soared from $5 million to $15–20 million each. With larger bunker capacity (first for coal, then oil), their ranges became transoceanic. Their main batteries increased in numbers and caliber until the standard battleship mounted ten or twelve guns of 12 or 14 inches in diameter; the larger guns both increased the weight of a broadside and improved ranges from 6,000 to 20,000 yards. Since the technological improvements of the era were shared by all the naval powers, the American building program also shared the universal insecurity about obsolescence and relative effectiveness. This insecurity was fed in 1906 when Great Britain launched the first true all-big-gun capital ship, HMS Dreadnought. Demonstrating dramatic improvements in speed, firepower, and armoring, Dreadnought accelerated the naval arms race. Naval analysts divided the world’s battlefleets into pre-Dreadnought and post-Dreadnought categories. The United States, which was already shifting to the all-big- gun ship in 1906, more than kept pace. In 1914 the American fleet boasted fourteen post -Dreadnought battleships.

The growth of the American battlefleet also demonstrated significant changes in the political and strategic foundations of American naval policy. The political coalition that supported the “new Navy” of the 1890s broadened and deepened in the federal government and the public. At the point of political attack strode Roosevelt (and, more reluctantly, Taft

and Wilson), a coalition of internationalist Republican and Democratic senators and congressmen, industrialists with an economic stake in navalism, Navy officers, and several public interest groups, especially the Navy League, formed in 1903.

Of particular significance within the Navy Department was the institutionalization of professional advice from line officers, who were enthusiastic naval builders but also critics of many aspects of fleet modernization. Before 1898 and to some degree thereafter, such long- range planning as occurred came from officers assigned to the Naval War College, the Office of Naval Intelligence, and the Bureau of Navigation. In 1900 Secretary of the Navy John D. Long created a General Board of senior officers to consolidate professional advice, and the General Board became the central agency for coordinating war-planning and building programs. The General Board consistently requested more vessels than its civilian superiors would approve; between 1900 and 1914 it asked for 340 vessels but received only 181. In 1910–1913 it caused a public stir by setting American modern battleship strength at forty-eight, more ships than the government thought it needed or could afford. Presided over by Admiral George Dewey, the hero of Manila Bay, the board emerged as a force for fleet modernization and expansion.

To some Navy officers, collectively labeled the “Young Turks,” the General Board did not provide sufficient line influence over Navy policy, and the period of naval expansion was accompanied by bitter arguments over Navy Department organization. On some issues there was consensus. The naval reformers, for example, agreed that sea power meant a battle- fleet-in-being, ready for a decisive ocean duel with its enemy. By 1907, the Navy had abandoned its traditional far-flung squadron deployments and concentrated most of its battleships in Atlantic waters. The only units deployed outside the hemisphere had old battleships, a few cruisers, and smaller vessels.

The Young Turks, led by such aggressive officers as Henry C. Taylor, A. O. Key, William S. Sims, William F. Fullam, Bradley Fiske, Ridley McLean, and Washington I. Chambers, lobbied for line-reformer influence. By 1915 the organizational reformers had made some limited progress in the face of civilian skepticism and Navy conservatism. In 1909 they scored a minor victory when Secretary of the Navy George von

Lengerke Meyer created a group of “naval aids,” staffed with Young Turks, to give advice, spur the General Board, and evaluate fleet readiness. Meyer’s Democratic successor, Josephus Daniels, reluctantly approved the creation of the post of chief of naval operations to replace the aids in 1915, but he filled the job with a traditionalist admiral, William S. Benson. Nevertheless, the CNO’s immediate staff continued to be a focal point for improved fleet efficiency and replaced a system of personal influence with bureaucratized policy advising.

The reformers’ demand that the line officers who would command the fleet in war receive more power reflected concern about real problems. For all its dramatic appearance, the Great White Fleet was not as effective as it might have to be. The battleships themselves showed distressing technical deficiencies. Their armor was often placed too low on the hull, and turrets received too little protection. The vessels had too little freeboard, which meant that heavy seas made manning the lower turrets and aiming guns difficult. The turrets did not have effective baffles to keep burning debris from reaching the powder magazines below; catastrophic explosions in 1904 and 1906 on American battleships caused a clamor for naval reform and temporarily threatened TR’s building program. Line officers were equally aware that the fleet lacked adequate numbers of sailors to man the new vessels. Despite a dramatic increase in the size of the Navy from 16,354 (1899) to 60,376 (1916), each ship normally lacked about 10 percent of its complement. The shortages were especially acute among petty officers and the skilled technicians needed to operate the new machinery. The recruiting service did not have enough manpower, money, or authority; the efforts of Secretary Daniels to sell the Navy as a great vocational education school and laboratory for social uplift did make recruiting somewhat easier. Naval planners also worried that the Navy did not have a “balanced” fleet for wartime operations. Although Congress would buy battleships, it would not fund adequate numbers of smaller vessels. By 1916 the General Board calculated the fleet was short 125 cruisers, destroyers, and auxiliary vessels.

The whole question of battlefleet support—especially the issue of bases —demonstrated the political limits to naval planning. In sum, the Navy had too many bases in the United States and too few bases abroad, measured by the projected war plans. Traditionally, a major naval base had

the necessary dry docks, machinery, and workshops needed to overhaul a battleship completely. By such criteria, the United States had ten major continental bases before World War I, while the much larger Royal Navy had only six. Navy planners knew that American facilities were excessive, but Congress regarded base building and manning as attractive patronage. New bases at Charleston and Bremerton, Washington, supplemented by smaller facilities at San Pedro and San Diego, California, gave the Navy more than enough shore support by 1916. The continental base structure was dramatically enhanced in 1914 when the Panama Canal opened, since the canal cut transit time from coast to coast by two-thirds.

The Navy’s search for bases abroad was frustrated by the State Department, which thought base building bad diplomacy, and Congress, which thought base building bad spending. Although the Navy sought a base in China, the diplomats ruled that this policy did not conform to the Open Door and stopped the movement. Interservice disputes stopped plans to build a major base in the Philippines. The Navy chose Subic Bay on the west coast of Luzon as its preferred site. The Army reported that it could not defend the base from a land attack; Subic Bay would be another Port Arthur, the “impregnable” Russian port in Manchuria that had fallen to the Japanese army in 1905. The Navy rejected the Army’s choice, Cavite peninsula in Manila Bay, since the old Spanish base had neither adequate base facilities nor anchorages for the fleet. Although the Navy eventually maintained facilities at both Subic and Cavite, it agreed in 1909 to build its major Pacific base at Pearl Harbor, Oahu, Hawaii. This decision did not immediately loosen congressional purse strings, and it further limited the Navy’s enthusiasm for defending the Philippines.

Since the Caribbean was close enough to the Navy’s Atlantic coast yards to make major bases unnecessary, the Navy sought instead a system of operating bases and stations there that would support wartime operations against either Britain or Germany. It was only partially successful in enacting its plans. Although the United States had the rights to two bases in Cuba, it built only one at isolated Guantanamo Bay, since the diplomats vetoed as too provocative plans for another at Havana. Diplomatic considerations also stopped plans for a base in Haiti or Santo Domingo. The annexation of Puerto Rico in 1899 and the Virgin Islands in 1915 gave the United States uncontested access to base sites in the

eastern Caribbean, but the harbor at San Juan, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands’ coves were not suitable for major fleet use.

Unable to secure forward bases in either the Pacific or the Caribbean, the Navy considered an alternative tactic, establishing temporary, or “advanced,” bases in the early stages of a naval campaign. Although the Navy was not satisfied with the numbers or sizes of its auxiliaries (colliers and oilers, ammunition ships, supply vessels, transports, and floating tenders and machine shops), it thought it might find such vessels in wartime in the American merchant fleet. It could not, however, completely extemporize a force to defend a forward operating base. In 1900 the General Board turned to the Navy’s sister service, the Marine Corps, and asked that the Corps reorganize and train for advanced base operations. Despite some modest experiments in emplacing harbor defenses, the Corps did not establish an Advanced Base Force until 1910, and it did not conduct major exercises until 1912. Marine traditionalism and the manpower and financial demands of garrisoning the increased number of naval stations abroad dampened Corps interest. The limited exercises and theoretical studies done by Navy and Marine officers, however, demonstrated the need for such a force. In theory, the Advanced Base Force would occupy an undefended harbor and then defend it from sea attack with stationary heavy guns and mines. Its mobile infantry and artillery would stop a land attack. The Navy would provide monitors, torpedo boats, and a few cruisers to assist the sea defenses. Convinced that the advanced base concept offered the Corps an important wartime role, a cadre of Marine officers became articulate spokesmen for improving the Navy’s ability to establish forward operating bases, but the actual forces for such operations did not develop rapidly.

Elsewhere in the Navy, other officers and civilian innovators examined the potential of new technology to reshape naval operations. Two novel developments—the submarine and the airplane—suggested that future naval warfare might occur above and beneath the seas, not just between rival battlefleets dueling upon the ocean’s surface. Although the first submarines appeared in experimental form in the late eighteenth century and the first successful submarine attack on a warship occurred in 1864 during the American Civil War, the Navy did not commission its first submarine until 1900. Naval conservatism in this case did not rest on a

lack of mission, since the submarine (more properly, the “submersible”) was an attractive weapon for close-to-shore coast defense. The difficulties were largely technological, primarily the development of adequate powerplants and torpedoes. The difficulty was that technological progress depended upon government funding, since submarines had no special commercial attractions. In the United States the submarine champion, the aging eccentric John R. Holland, took some twenty years and six models to prove that he had an answer to the propulsion problem. Essentially, Holland coupled the internal-combustion engine for surface cruising with battery-powered electric engines for submerged attacks. Attendant problems in designing pressure hulls and ventilation systems slowed adoption of the submarine; early crews seemed to have little choice between carbon monoxide and chlorine gas asphyxiation. Submariners were constantly in fear of a break in their hull, which could submerge their vessel permanently. Nevertheless, the submarine remained a relatively cheap coastal defense weapon, and the Navy had thirty-four boats by 1914, twelve of them modern diesel-powered vessels of 500 to 700 tons, or five times larger than Holland’s experimental boats. At the time, the United States was the world’s fourth-strongest submarine power.

Although the Navy watched the often comical and futile efforts to fly with detachment, its interest increased after the Wright brothers’ flight in 1903 and flowered in 1910 when Captain Washington I. Chambers and inventor Glenn Curtiss formed an effective coalition of naval aviation enthusiasts. In terms of mission, the aviation champions thought of airplanes as reconnaissance and naval gunfire scouting craft. Technically, this role meant that some method had to be found to fly an airplane off a ship and then recover it. In 1911 Congress gave the Navy $25,000 for its first three experimental planes after a civilian test pilot successfully flew a Curtiss aircraft off a warship the year before. With pontoons and a hoist, an airplane could also be recovered. Nevertheless, the “hydroaeroplane” force developed slowly because aircraft themselves were expensive, and the development of a force of pilots, bases, and supporting establishment suggested costs that naval planners and Congress were not willing to pay. Part of their reluctance stemmed from the fact that the airplanes of the day did not have the power to drop bombs that would sink a warship. Although experiments with the electric torpedo (used by both surface

ships and submarines) suggested that an airplane might someday have an attack capability, aviation enthusiasts did not have much success in selling the airplane as the future ultimate weapon of naval warfare. Even though they proved that an airplane could land on a warship with the help of arresting gear, which suggested that heavy bomb carriers could be developed free of the seaplane-hoist mode, naval aviators could muster support only for an aviation force linked to the reconnaissance mission. On the eve of World War I the Navy had only eight aircraft and thirteen officer-pilots. In fact, public and official interest supported the use of dirigibles for naval aviation tasks. With the responsibility for aviation policy divided between several of the traditional technical bureaus, the future of Navy flying ranked well below other Navy Department concerns.

In 1915, however, the Navy’s aviators and their civilian colleagues had made sufficient progress to win General Board and congressional support for a more ambitious commitment to naval aviation. Its interest heightened by the world war, Congress appropriated $1 million to create and support a force of fifty airplanes and three dirigibles. This program was still in its earliest stages when the U.S. Navy went to war in 1917.

The U.S. Navy between 1898 and 1917 increased its capability to engage the fleet of any other major power, but it could do so only if the decisive fleet action occurred north of the equator, close to the Navy’s bases in the continental United States. The United States did not have the resources to conduct major wartime naval operations in the western Pacific, and its dominance in the Caribbean might be secure in peacetime but not, perhaps, in wartime. Holding the Panama Canal remained critical to operations in either ocean. In addition, the Navy retained its battleship orientation, since naval politics within the service and the federal government produced no other consensus. The fleet-in-being was not balanced for wartime needs and required augmentation with merchant vessels and wartime construction in order to provide sufficient numbers of cruisers, destroyers, submarines, and auxiliaries. Neither submarine nor aviation development had yet reached the point of challenging the great fleet engagement as the essence of naval warfare. While the Navy’s line officers, whose principal interest was war preparedness, had gained some influence in the Navy Department, they did not yet dominate

policymaking. The Navy of Manila Bay and Santiago had changed, but so had its potential adversaries and missions.

Reforming the Land Forces

Despite its victory in “the splendid little war” against Spain, the U.S. Army entered the new century conscious that its campaigns in 1898 were “within measurable distance of a military disaster,” as Theodore Roosevelt characterized the siege of Santiago. For the public, the press, and much of the Army officer corps the war felt like a defeat, for it had revealed all the flaws of American land force policy and had dramatized the institutional weaknesses of the regular Army and the militia (or National Guard) of the states. Both major components of the wartime Army showed they had not made the transition from frontier constabulary and strike police. Nor had the War Department yet reorganized in order to make the wartime mobilization of citizen-volunteers more efficient. Although the War Department’s failure, investigated by a special presidential commission headed by railroader and former general Grenville Dodge, seemed worse than it really was, most War Department officials and critics believed that some reform was necessary. Over the content of the reform movement there was continuous disagreement. Nevertheless, by 1917 the reform movement had worked fundamental changes in American land force policy.

Assisted by a close group of Army officer-advisers, Secretary of War Elihu Root (1899–1904) led the reform movement, which rallied sufficient congressional and Army supporters to give it momentum beyond Root’s tenure. Upon taking office, Root accepted the key concept of military professionalism: “The real object of having an army is to provide for war.” This axiom became the basic measure of land force reform. Giving this idea institutional expression proved far more difficult, for the American political tradition remained hostile to increased military preparedness and professionalism. An astute negotiator and corporation lawyer, Root knew and the Army was to learn that the sense of disaster was short-lived. Before the impetus for reform ebbed, only to be stimulated again by World War I, the reformers had scored several limited victories in the name of mobilization readiness.

Coached by Adjutant General Henry C. Corbin and Major William H. Carter, Root quickly learned that the War Department had to become a unified center of policy direction rather than three conflicting alliances based upon the office of the Secretary of War, the office of the commanding general, and the heads of the various administrative, technical, and logistical departments and bureaus. Until the War Department had a single “brain of the army,” as British writer Spencer Wilkinson characterized a general staff, the planning for war and the direction of war when it came would continue to be plagued by poor coordination, jurisdictional battles, and inertia. In an ideal sense, the model for military management was the German Grosse Generalstab, or Great General Staff, which military analysts credited for the German victories in the wars of unification in the 1860s and 1870s. Such a staff, dominated by line officers, would advise the president and secretary of war, prepare Army legislation and policies, supervise the activities of the departments and bureaus, and direct training. Politically, however, a general staff conjured up visions of German militarism, regular Army arrogance, and executive branch tyranny.

Outflanking his opponents, Secretary Root advanced steadily toward a general staff until Congress accepted the organization in limited form in the General Staff Act of 1903. Aware that the general staff concept had powerful enemies within the Army, especially Lieutenant General Nelson A. Miles, the commanding general, and Brigadier General Fred C. Ainsworth, chief of the Record and Pension Office, Root moved with caution. First, he had a board of officers study the question of establishing an Army War College; the board’s positive report was endorsed and the war college created in 1900. Root immediately assigned the war college faculty duties much like those of a general staff and used its officers to develop and advocate the general staff concept. Then, mustering support from Roosevelt, a prestigious group of Civil War generals, and reformist civilians, Root persuaded Congress to accept an Americanized version of the Great General Staff. The new law replaced the commanding general with a chief of staff, who would rotate in office every four years, and a staff of forty-five officers. Some of these General Staff officers, who would also rotate, would serve in Washington while others served in the headquarters of the Army’s geographic departments, which supervised the

field forces. The law, however, gave the General Staff only “supervisory” and “coordinating” authority over the War Department departments and bureaus, and it did not consolidate the logistical bureaus as Root advocated. In fact, the law and its subsequent implementation and modification gave Ainsworth, who became the adjutant general, real power equal to the chief of staff’s.

Once established, the General Staff did bring some improvements to the Army’s organization for wartime mobilization, but its power did not increase rapidly enough to please Army reformers. Among the staff’s accomplishments were the improvement of officer education, field maneuvers, contingency planning, intelligence collection and analysis, tactical organization, and theoretical mobilization planning. When the United States sent regular troops to the Mexican border in 1911, the movement was not especially well organized; a similar deployment in 1913 went much more smoothly. An expedition to Cuba in 1906 by 5,000 regulars showed a managerial competence absent in 1898.

Nevertheless, the General Staff suffered many wounds in its early days, some from enemies, some self-inflicted. For example, the bureau chiefs still proved fractious and insubordinate, encouraged by their Army friends and congressional allies. Several chiefs of staff had great difficulty enforcing policy until Chief of Staff Leonard Wood (1910–1914) and Secretary of War Henry L. Stimson (1911–1913) challenged General Ainsworth’s power in 1912. Maneuvering Ainsworth into retirement with the threat of a court-martial for insubordination, the imperious Wood and Stimson seem to have established the chief of staff’s position as the principal source of professional advice and command authority, but Ainsworth and Congress immediately curbed Wood and the staff with inhibiting legislation. When Wood’s tenure ended, he was replaced by less assertive generals. With the Wilson administration and Congress hostile to the General Staff, the “brain of the Army” did not prosper. When the United States entered World War I, the staff had only twenty-two officers in Washington, mired in routine paperwork and theoretical war plans of limited usefulness.

If the Army’s “brain” needed fresh blood, its body—the tactical units with which it would fight future wars—needed more muscle, principally manpower. Postponing permanent legislation until the end of the

Philippine insurrection was in sight, Congress waited until 1901 to enlarge the regular Army to 3,820 officers and 84,799 men, and it did not appropriate enough money to maintain even this force, which fell below War Department estimates. Clearly some sort of reserve force would be required to reinforce the regulars in the early stages of war while the United States mobilized and trained a citizen-soldier army. The reinforcement mission meant that the first-line reserves would have to mobilize quickly and be available legally for expeditionary duty abroad. Ideally, the War Department preferred a reserve force raised, organized, and controlled only by the national government. Its model was the German system, which required conscripts to serve first with the standing army and then in various reserve units for a total of twelve years. Americans, however, thought compulsory service militaristic and foreign to their society and institutions, whatever its military benefits. As Secretary Root and his advisers realized, any reserve system had to rely on volunteers, and the only expression of military voluntarism in peacetime was the National Guard.

As it proved in 1898 when it served as the principal recruiting base for volunteers, the National Guard could provide ardent recruits for wartime service and some existing tactical structure for their training and employment. In 1899 Congress rewarded the Guard by increasing its annual subsidy from $400,000 to $1 million. The Guard’s shortcomings were equally obvious. Politically, there were as many National Guards as there were states and territories, all influenced more or less by state patronage politics, which tolerated aged, infirm, and incompetent officers to a degree the regular Army (at least the reformers) would not. In terms of mission and political theory, the Guard tended to fall into four camps: states’ rights units, “social” units, “law and order” units, and reservists- for-war units. For two decades, National Guard reformers, represented by the National Guard Association of the United States, had attempted to persuade state legislatures to increase Guard subsidies for military training unrelated to state missions, which were principally suppressing labor and racial violence. Although the governments of New York, Pennsylvania, and New England proved supportive, reform at the state level did not flourish. Disappointed at the limits of state support for the

wartime reserve mission, the Guard reformers turned to the federal government and found the War Department and Congress sympathetic.

From 1903 to 1912, militia reform flourished in Washington, spurred by Roosevelt (an ex-Guard officer), Root, Assistant Secretary of War William Cary Sanger (also an ex-Guardsman), the National Guard Association, part of Congress, and even regular Army officers. The final laws disappointed uncompromising Uptonian officers, states’ righters, and the antimilitary clique in Congress, but they did provide the foundation for an improved Guard for the reinforcement mission. In 1903 Congress passed a new Militia Act, whose principal legislative sponsor was Representative Charles W. Dick, an Ohio Republican and Guard general. The Dick Act essentially exchanged federal dollars and equipment for increased Army control of the Guard’s training and organization. The law recognized two militias: the Organized Militia (National Guard) under dual federal-state control, and the unorganized mass of males (ages eighteen to forty-five) that retained both national and state military obligations in emergencies. Only the Organized Militia, however, would receive federal monies and then only in relationship to the degree that its units met federal standards in commissioning officers, recruiting enlisted men to Army physical and mental standards, organizing units like their Army counterparts, and undergoing field training. For example, Guard units could increase federal support by going to summer camp and participating in maneuvers with the regular Army. Under a complex funding formula, the more the Guard trained, the more money it received to pay the trainees and the more free arms and equipment it could requisition through the Army. In addition, the president could call up the Guard for nine months rather than three months, but the geographic limitation to continental service remained. As a beginning, however, especially when the Guard subsidy increased to $2 million in 1906, the Dick Act heartened the reformers.

The Dick Act left many issues unresolved, but a second Militia Act of 1908 appeared to address most of the remaining problems. The most important change was that the time and geographic limits for Guard service disappeared, but only in return for a provision that Guardsmen would go to war as units, not individual replacements for Army regiments. One might have interpreted the original Dick Act to mean that Guard

regiments might be federalized as units, then reorganized as federal volunteers for overseas service. Guardsmen argued persuasively that hometown officers and local loyalties gave the Guard its peacetime vitality and wartime mobilization potential. To check Guard fears that the General Staff saw it primarily as a pool of individual replacements, Congress established a National Guard Bureau in the War Department, whose chief reported directly to the secretary of war, not to the General Staff.

The Guard reform movement, however, slowed in 1912 when the attorney general ruled that the provision for compulsory overseas service included in the 1908 law was unconstitutional. Ironically, the ruling actually came from the office of the judge advocate general, the Army’s chief lawyer. Reflecting General Staff–bureau antagonisms, the conservatism of the Taft administration, and the Uptonianism of regular officers, the ruling turned attention away from the Guard and back to the issue of an independent federal reserve force. One effort at this alternative, the Reserve Act of 1912, allowed regulars to shorten their obligated active service by joining a federal reserve. Two years later this “force” numbered sixteen enlisted men. Clearly the United States did not have an adequate system for wartime mobilization.

The General Staff and reserve force issues tended to dominate land force policymaking, especially in the civil-military political arena, but the Army at the same time made halting steps to organize itself for modern warfare and to come to grips with the new military technology offered by a mighty host of civilians and its own uniformed inventors. Although America was rich in inventors, the absence of external threat and public urgency limited the Army to experimentation and testing. Spurred by the world war, the European armed forces soon took the lead in finding more efficient ways to destroy each other with new weapons and organizational techniques. The U.S. Army shared the exploration for new ways to wage war.

Organizationally, modernization took many forms. The tactical units of the Army, principally the thirty infantry and fifteen cavalry regiments, gradually shifted to posts that could accommodate a regiment or more in order to improve training. Congressional reluctance to close bases, however, impeded troop concentration. On paper—and occasionally for

maneuvers and service on the Mexican border—the Army formed brigades (two or more regiments) and divisions (two or more brigades), and even the National Guard had a theoretical grouping of twelve divisions, organized on a regional basis. The Army school system proliferated in order to accommodate more detailed technical training for regular officers and enlisted men. After much debate and political infighting, the artillery separated in 1907 into two separate arms, field artillery and coast artillery. Field artillery regiments reappeared on maneuvers, while the new Coast Artillery Corps enjoyed its status by establishing a separate staff in Washington and successfully lobbying for increased money for new guns and fortifications. In 1912 Congress finally accepted the wisdom of logistical consolidation and created a Quartermaster Department that absorbed the functions of the Subsistence and Paymaster Departments. The law also provided for a separate Service Corps of 6,000 men for field and base operations.

To some degree the growing revolution in military technology posed a bewildering range of organizational and doctrinal problems. Like other armies, the U.S. Army experienced an era of technical anxiety. In terms of ordnance, improved metallurgy, machine tooling, and chemistry made it possible for small arms and artillery to increase their ranges, rates of fire, and accuracy by a factor of three. In rifles and field guns, the United States kept pace by adopting the Springfield M 1903 and the M 1902 3- inch gun. The artillery piece had shells, a recoil mechanism, and optical sights comparable with the French 75-mm gun, the premier European fieldpiece. In 1905 the Army opened its first plant to produce the most advanced smokeless powder. The Ordnance Department also tested a wide variety of machine guns, including the models offered by John M. Browning, Hiram Maxim, and I.N. Lewis. Emphasizing the need for light weight for field mobility, the Army adopted a substandard automatic weapon, the Benet-Mercie, primarily because it thought the inventors would soon produce lighter models of their machine guns. In the meantime, Browning, Maxim, and Lewis guns turned the Western Front of World War I into a slaughter pit.

The revolution in military firepower posed serious problems for the battlefield control of tactical units, but the changes in communications did not keep pace. The telegraph, telephone, and radio had already

improved administrative and strategic communications, but tactical communications depended upon visual signals and written messages until the Army adopted battery-powered field phones. With the development of an indirect fire capability, the artillery led the way in creating phone systems to link its forward observers, fire detection centers, and firing batteries. Wire, however, could be laid only as fast as men could walk or drive (both slow under fire), and it was vulnerable to enemy fire and careless teamsters.

The smell of oil and exhaust fumes around a few posts announced, too, that the Army had begun its love affair with the automobile. The military advantages of marrying the internal combustion engine to wheeled carriages had impressed the Army as early as the 1890s, but only after two years of limited tests did the Quartermaster Department in 1906 purchase its first six cars. More experiments followed, now including the use of trucks and cars in the field. When one colonel covered the same distance in three hours by car that he had traveled on horseback in three days, he vowed he would never again get into a saddle when a car was available. In 1912 an auto-truck test unit drove 1,500 miles and proved that it could average speeds twice those of mule-drawn wagons. Nevertheless, motorization faced substantial barriers. Army conservatives feared that their soldiers would use the vehicles for personal errands and would not maintain them properly. These proved reasonable concerns. The tradeoffs in cost and availability of gasoline and spare parts versus forage and harness perplexed quartermaster planning. Given the primitive state of American roads, horses looked like a better option than trucks, especially in the west, where much of the Army still trained and patrolled the borders. In addition, War Department requirements for field cars and trucks discouraged commercial builders, who saw no future in small Army orders. Nevertheless, the field experiments continued until 1916, when Army trucks got their first real test during the Punitive Expedition into Mexico. In a daring buy of 500 commercial vehicles valued at $450,000, the War Department formed twenty-two truck companies, which proved their worth carrying supplies. The Army stood on the curb of the motor age.

Like the motorization movement, the Army’s earliest experiences with airplanes were long on promise and short on performance, but the

operations of 1916 in Mexico revived a flagging commitment. Discouraged by its fruitless donations to aerial inventor Dr. Samuel Langley, the War Department’s Board of Ordnance and Fortification avoided subsidizing the Wright brothers even after 1903 and believed that dirigibles offered more military potential than rigid-wing aircraft. In 1907, however, with President Roosevelt’s encouragement, the Signal Corps formed an aeronautical division and reopened negotiations for a test aircraft, which the Wrights eventually delivered in 1909. Army-dictated performance standards proved difficult to meet, but the potential use of the airplane for reconnaissance purposes kept Army interest alive. The Army demanded an aircraft powerful enough to carry two persons (one to fly, one to observe) for 125 miles at 40 miles an hour. Deterred by the cost and danger of manned flight (the first American fatality was an Army lieutenant), the Signal Corps conducted its tests cautiously in both the financial and operational sense. Although Army officers successfully rigged primitive bombing systems and machine guns on the test planes, most aviation pioneers (including Billy Mitchell) did not think aviation technology would soon produce anything other than reconnaissance planes. Nevertheless, by 1913 the Army could organize a 1st Aero Squadron in Texas, equipped with eight primitive Curtiss biplanes. In 1916 the squadron deployed into Mexico and performed yeoman service conducting scouting missions and carrying messages, but soon lost all its aircraft to crashes or maintenance problems. The squadron’s performance, however, broadened support for a more ambitious Army aviation program.

Aviation experimentation, funded by congressional appropriations for the Army and Navy, sailed along with relative safety and success, then crashed in both aircraft and funding terms. No one considered pioneer flying risk-free. Between 1903 and 1910 thirty-four pilots died in flying accidents. In one two-year period, 1911–1912, however, more than 200 pilots died, many of them pioneers. Control systems and engine mountings did not keep pace with engine power and the aerodynamics of faster flight. Aviation development in the United States stalled as Congress and aircraft designers became risk-averse. The opportunity to exploit the Lewis machine gun, Speery gyroscopes, and optical bombsights passed.

Between 1909 and 1925 no American aircraft or aviation technology won a prize at the Paris air show, the showcase of international aviation.

Even without the stimulus of the world war, the Army and the National Guard by 1916 showed distinct signs of modernity despite the absence of a significant threat or any widespread public interest in military affairs. There was no “Great Khaki Army” to excite support, like the Great White Fleet. With the exception of a few civilian military enthusiasts, the heart of modernization was the regular Army officer corps, which depended upon fragile coalitions with civilian political leaders and technologists to make organizational changes. Modernization, moreover, could not break free from the expectation that the only war the United States would fight would occur either in the Pacific or in the Western Hemisphere. In either theater the enemies could be defeated by the regular Army and National Guard in the war’s early stages or overwhelmed eventually by America’s vast industrial and manpower resources. In any event, the battlefleet might decide the issue before the land forces even became engaged. While such assumptions proved naïve in 1917, they rested on political realities that Army officers themselves shared. In the face of such popular notions, the wonder is not that land force reform accomplished so little, but that it accomplished so much.

The Armed Forces and Imperial Defense

A major barrier to the modernization of the American armed forces before World War I was the military’s constant involvement with overseas interventions. Despite the fact that reformers argued that the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps should concentrate upon their wartime missions, all the armed forces found themselves busy with constabulary duties beyond the borders of the United States. These duties may have provided some favorable publicity, usually romantic nonsense, but by and large they distracted the armed forces from training for modern war. As European military observers noted, the United States had a declaratory policy of military modernization and national defense, but it had a military establishment still wedded to imperial policing.

Surveying the wreckage of the Spanish empire in the Caribbean, to which the United States had administered the coup de grace in 1898,

American policymakers committed their own armed forces in order to reshape the destiny of the nations in “the American lake.” In the strictest terms of self-interest, the primary concern was building and protecting an isthmian canal. But this self-interest did not exclude other rationales for interventionism, which included curbing European influence, protecting American loans, stimulating economic growth and international trade (primarily for American merchants), and encouraging the development of republican, democratic governments and private and public institutions much like those in the United States. Although American cultural imperialism fell short in reality, it kept substantial portions of the armed forces occupied in reformist occupations.

After the Treaty of Paris in 1898, the Army made Cuba and Puerto Rico its laboratory for reform but soon surrendered its mission to the Marine Corps. Since Puerto Rico was an annexed territory, the Army’s administrative functions passed quickly to a civilian government, but not before Army officers had begun to reshape the island’s public services. In addition, the War Department formed the Puerto Rican Regiment, a regular Army infantry regiment, to provide federal authorities with a military response to civil disturbances and minor foreign threats. In Cuba the War Department ran a military government from 1898 until 1902, when Cuba officially became an independent nation. During the transition period the Army successfully found a way to curb yellow fever, pioneered public health and public works projects, reformed the island’s educational system, and introduced novel governmental practices like efficiency, justice, and honesty. None of these accomplishments proved transferable, however, and in 1906 the United States again assumed control of the island’s government when corrupt elections sparked a civil war. Again, Army officers led a drive for administrative reform, which ended with the American withdrawal in 1909. Disillusioned with the tool of reformist military occupation, the United States took a more limited role in subsequent Cuban civil wars.

The military also served as the spearhead of American action in Panama. When the Roosevelt administration decided to exploit Panamanian nationalism and investors’ cupidity in 1903 and take direct control of the isthmian canal route and construction, it blocked Colombian military intervention with Navy squadrons at Colon and

Panama City and landed Marines to protect the Panamanian revolutionaries. When a highly favorable treaty created the Canal Zone and heralded the beginning of American construction, the Roosevelt administration gave the military principal roles in making the canal program work. The Corps of Engineers—under the eventual guidance of Brigadier General George W. Goethals—and the Medical Department, represented by Colonel William C. Gorgas, received the mission to overcome the engineering and disease problems that had frustrated earlier canal builders. Both groups of officers succeeded, and the canal opened in 1914. Small naval units and a Marine regiment assumed the initial responsibility for ensuring order and defense, but the Marines were replaced by World War I with a mix of Army coastal defense and mobile troops. In the meantime, the Marines and Navy supported State Department policies in nearby Nicaragua, another possible canal location and site of American political and financial commitments. In 1912 American expeditionary forces intervened in a Nicaraguan civil war and waged active military operations to crush the revolt. A Marine legation guard remained in Managua to dramatize American concern with Nicaraguan politics.

Across the sun-kissed Caribbean, the green island of Hispaniola also concerned the State Department, primarily because its governments courted foreign intervention and failed to establish effective, democratic administrations. The neighboring countries of Haiti and Santo Domingo both proved running sores in American Caribbean policy. Justified by the Roosevelt Corollary to the Monroe Doctrine, which stated that the United States would intervene to preempt European intervention, various formulas for diplomatic pressure and fiscal supervision for both countries proved unsuccessful in reducing governmental instability. Civil wars in Haiti in 1915 and the Dominican Republic in 1916 drew Navy squadrons and Marine expeditionary brigades to both countries, first to break up the rebel armies and then to impose reformist occupations. In both countries Marine units, assisted marginally by Marine-created native constabularies, fought vicious guerrilla wars with rural terrorists. The twin occupations, which lasted in the Dominican Republic until 1924 and in Haiti until 1934, absorbed many of the Marine units assigned to Advanced Base Force training and brought no special credit to the Corps, which was

accused of atrocities. The general effectiveness of American military administration in both countries did not prove publicly appealing or lasting, and both nations lapsed into dictatorships after American withdrawal.

Willingly ceding the pacification mission in the Caribbean to the Marine Corps (“State Department troops,” soldiers called Marines), the Army did not escape the toils of America’s Latin diplomacy, for from 1911 until 1917 much of the Army’s attention focused upon the possibility of war with Mexico. While the Mexican Revolution twisted its way to eventual success, American diplomacy followed the same complex path. Under the Taft administration, the government tried to seal the border to gun-runners and guerrilla organizers with scant success. When cavalry patrols proved insufficiently impressive to the Mexicans, the administration in 1911 and 1913 formed an entire division of combined arms in Texas. The first mobilization had little clear direction, but the second was the first stage in War Plan Green, which included an overland campaign (à la 1847) from Veracruz to Mexico City. The Wilson administration considered military intervention seriously, since it feared German and Japanese penetration in Mexico and found the counterrevolutionary Heurta regime (1911–1914) distasteful. Favoring a rebel victory, Wilson committed a Navy-Marine task force to Veracruz in 1914, where the Americans fought their way through the city and established an occupation zone. An Army brigade from Texas soon followed, but, assessing the unexpected bloodshed, the Wilson administration chose to talk, not fight. The American forces withdrew by the end of the year, but not before the Huerta regime had collapsed.

The Veracruz expedition did not end the Mexican deployment, since the civil war—now waged between two revolutionary factions led by Venustiano Carranza and Pancho Villa—spilled over the American border and spawned lesser political and racial violence along the Rio Grande. Frustrated by American support for Carranza, Villa’s band raided Columbus, New Mexico, in March 1916, and killed fifteen American civilians and soldiers. Wilson ordered the Punitive Expedition of 10,000 soldiers under the command of Brigadier General John J. Pershing, a very hard taskmaster, into Mexico to destroy Villa’s army. When the Mexican government sent troops to seal the flanks of the expedition, which it had

tacitly accepted but disliked, Wilson mobilized most of the regular Army along the border and reinforced it with 112,000 National Guardsmen. Despite two battles between American and Mexican regulars, both nations backed away from war, since the Americans had also dispersed Villa’s mounted columns. As the threat of war with Germany mounted in early 1917, the Punitive Expedition returned across the international border, rich in field experience and disgruntled with the ambiguities of Wilsonian diplomacy.

Across the Pacific other American soldiers guarded the Philippines from external attack (an unlikely threat) and internal violence (an ever- present possibility). To discourage any invader, Army engineers began to fortify and arm the islands at the mouth of Manila Bay, principally Corregidor and El Fraile, which became the “concrete battleship” known as Fort Drum. North of Manila, the Army formed a composite brigade of two infantry regiments, two cavalry squadrons, an artillery battery, and an engineer detachment as its mobile defense force. These troops, however, did not bear much of the burden of insular peacekeeping, which fell to the American-officered regiment of Philippine scouts and the paramilitary Philippine Constabulary. The most active operations occurred on the Moro islands of Mindanao and the Jolo archipelago, where Muslim Filipinos resisted civilization American style. Unassociated with the insurrectos of 1899–1902, the Moros defended their traditions of slavery, tribal warfare, and religious frenzies. Some American generals like Leonard Wood and John J. Pershing enhanced their reputations as the civil governors and military commanders of the Moro territory, largely by conducting campaigns to disarm the Moros or to break up dissident bands. The American “bamboo army”—usually a combination of regular Army, Scout, and Constabulary companies—began operations against the Moros in 1902 and fought them through a series of arduous campaigns: Lake Lanao and Jolo (1903), the Cotabato Valley (1905), Bud Dajo Mountain (1906 and 1911), and Bud Bagsak Mountain (1911 and 1913). While these campaigns tempered a whole generation of Army officers, the battles with the Moros harked back to the nineteenth-century clashes with the American Indians.

The World War and the Preparedness Movement

The roar of the guns of August 1914 reached the United States in indistinct tones, but a year after the outbreak of World War I, the European conflict brought a major reconsideration of American military policy. By the autumn of 1916 the Preparedness Movement had become a force in a presidential election and had produced ambitious legislation that reshaped naval and land force policy. Like all American mass political phenomena, the Preparedness Movement contained policy contradictions and antagonistic goals and represented the diverse interests of many political groups. Nevertheless, it represented the first time that defense policy in peacetime influenced American politics and involved more people than a limited policymaking elite. On the other hand, its legislative products came too late to have any substantial impact on American military readiness, either to fight World War I or to avoid intervention by imposing a peace before American entry into the war.

Concerned by the early indecisiveness of the European war and the German conduct of submarine warfare, American internationalists (largely eastern, Republican, and pro-Allied) formed a complex network of preparedness lobbies and began propaganda programs in order to build support for increased military spending. The Germans cooperated in the organizing phase of the movement by sinking the British liner Lusitania in May 1915 and killing over 100 Americans. The Lusitania crisis shifted American animus toward Germany, awakened a larger audience to military affairs, and converted President Wilson to preparedness, if only to stay in front of public opinion. German submarine warfare also focused public and congressional attention upon American naval policy, since freedom of the seas was a concept relatively free of political division that transcended the wisdom of intervention. Americans who found no attractions in aiding the Allies could support naval preparedness because a larger fleet could still be an instrument of unilateral action, foreign trade, and protection of the Western Hemisphere during and after the war. Interventionists, on the other hand, saw a new building program as a useful way to mobilize public opinion, coerce Germany, and hearten the Allies. Building upon a generation of public faith that the fleet would protect the United States from foreign

unpleasantness, the uneasy coalition of navalists fashioned an ambitious new plan to give the nation a “Navy second to none.”

As pressure for some sort of naval legislation increased, the Wilson administration and Congress designed a new fleet-building program. Abandoning 1914 plans to modernize but not enlarge the fleet, the administration essentially proposed a five-year program drafted by the General Board that would have brought the fleet by 1925 to numbers second only to the Royal Navy and in quality superior to even the British. After much internal bargaining, Congress approved the General Board’s plan in August 1916, with the major change that the shipbuilding should be completely started within a three-year period, thus ensuring a “Navy second to none” earlier than 1925. Approved by the Senate by a vote of 71 to 8 and by the House by 283 to 50, the Naval Act of 1916 provided for the construction of ten battleships, sixteen cruisers, fifty destroyers, seventy-two submarines, and fourteen auxiliaries. The strategic rationale for the program did not depart from the assumptions of prewar contingency plans, largely focused on deterring or fighting Japan in the Pacific and Germany in the Caribbean. The law, however, stated that the United States would forgo the program if it could find some way to negotiate freedom of the seas and secure its interests in the Western Hemisphere and the Pacific through mutual nonaggression pacts. Given the development of the naval campaigns of World War I, the act had little relevance to the war itself, since it paid no special attention to antisubmarine warfare.

Land force reform followed a more controversial course. Discouraged by the limits of National Guard reconstruction and encouraged by the enthusiasm of Secretary of War Stimson and Chief of Staff Wood, the General Staff completed a comprehensive analysis of land force policy in 1912, released in an executive document, The Organization of the Land Forces of the United States. The General Staff study had two novel aspects: It was made public, and it focused on the lack of an adequate reserve force with prewar training. Reflecting Stimson’s and Wood’s faith in the effectiveness of the American citizen-soldier, the report stressed that the United States could not fight a major war without reserves drawn from the citizenry, but it warned that the nation might not be granted sufficient time to train volunteer forces in a future war. But the idea of voluntary

peacetime training in a federally sponsored reserve system found no champions in an election year despite its military wisdom.

Coming to office in 1913, the Wilson administration and its Democratic Congress did not view land force reform as a pressing national issue. Recognizing General Wood’s preference for the Republicans and professional commitment to reserve reform, the administration nevertheless allowed the aggressive Rough Rider to finish his full term as chief of staff. Wood used the opportunity to sponsor a pet project: summer military training camps for college students. Surveying the public sentiment for voluntary peacetime training, Wood saw hopeful signs in the cadet training programs of the land-grant colleges established by the Morrill Act of 1862. Even without any promise of a postgraduation commission, such programs in 1911 had 29,000 male participants. Wood also knew that the most critical shortage of soldiers in the wartime volunteer armies was company-grade officers. Therefore, he established two summer camps for college students in 1913. So successful was the response from students and educators that Wood held four camps in the summer of 1914, enrolling nearly 1,000 students. Not accidentally, the summer trainees, who paid their own expenses, represented the elite of the east coast and received as much citizenship and policy indoctrination as technical military training.

The outbreak of World War I gave the voluntary training movement a welcome stimulus, and Secretary of War Lindley M. Garrison and Wood, now commander of the Eastern Department, exploited the new sense of urgency in land force reform. Converted to preparedness by the General Staff, Garrison sponsored an updated report on readiness, Statement of a Proper Military Policy for the United States (1915), which proposed the creation of a federal volunteer reserve force of 250,000 men trained before war broke out. But Garrison’s “Continental Army Plan” did not impress Congress, since it smacked of intervention in the world war and relegated the National Guard to a lower order of federal support. Both characteristics were politically unattractive, even to preparedness advocates. In the meantime Wood, manfully supported by new Chief of Staff Hugh L. Scott, enlarged the summer training program to include college students and civic-minded business and professional men from the east coast. Although the summer camp movement took its name from

Wood’s encampment at Plattsburgh, New York, the 1915 camps were held at four different locations and enrolled nearly 4,000 volunteers. Despite official and Democratic criticism that the camps were a hotbed of Republican interventionism, the summer camp movement prospered under the sponsorship of an impressive array of business, labor, professional, and religious groups. As Wood himself became more controversial and outspoken on the issue of compulsory military training, the leadership of the movement shifted to civilians, especially the Military Training Camp Association (1916), led by New York lawyer Grenville Clark.

Nourished by Clark’s astute guidance and heightened public concern for military preparedness, the Plattsburg Movement reached a new apogee of popularity in the summer of 1916, when 10,000 volunteers attended ten different camps held across the country. Although the War Department supported the camps with training cadres and equipment, the trainees still paid their own way or received “scholarships” and had no guarantee that they would be commissioned in wartime. Nevertheless, the Plattsburg Movement demonstrated the depth of interest in military training and presented Congress with irrefutable proof that influential portions of the public were willing to make personal commitments to peacetime preparedness. In addition, the movement stressed values that no true Progressive could reject: Increased civic awareness and public responsibility; the role of military service in reducing class, ethnic, and regional antagonisms; and the preparation of American youth for leadership.

Having scuttled the “Continental Army Plan” and thrown Wilson’s War Department into disarray when Garrison and his assistant resigned, Congress seized the initiative in drafting new land force legislation. Correctly reading public sentiment toward some form of peacetime training, Congress patched together a set of proposals drawn from the General Staff, the National Guard lobby, citizen preparedness groups, and a technical-corporate elite concerned about economic mobilization. The intense cloakroom bargaining reflected not only ideas about preparedness but also Democratic determination to seize the military reform issue away from the Republicans and to accommodate the National Guard. As passed finally on June 3, the National Defense Act of

1916 represented the most comprehensive effort to organize a land force structure for future mobilization, but it made no special provisions for a crash preparedness program. Any reform hinting at intervention in the European war was still too controversial. To interventionists, the act was “either a comedy or a tragedy,” as one critic described it.

The National Defense Act of 1916, however, contained ambitious plans for future land force expansion. The regular Army was to grow to 175,000 over a five-year period. Its first-line reserve force would be the National Guard, which was supposed to grow with the aid of federal drill pay to a maximum of 400,000. By taking a dual oath (federal and state) upon enlistment, Guardsmen could be compelled to serve abroad for unlimited periods of time in a national emergency, but they would go to war as Guard units, not as individuals. Guard units, however, would not receive federal subsidies unless they drilled forty-eight times a year at their armories and attended a two-week summer camp. The War Department would establish physical and mental standards for Guard enlistees and retained the right to screen Guard officers for fitness. Behind the Guard the law did not establish a federal reserve like the “Continental Army,” but it did provide opportunities for college students and Plattsburg enthusiasts to receive reserve commissions through the Reserve Officers Training Corps at universities and through summer training. The reserve officers would form an Officers Reserve Corps prepared to provide junior line officers and technical specialists for the enlarged wartime Army.

The new law for the first time also recognized that the federal government required substantial emergency powers over industry and transportation if it was to supply a mass wartime Army. The president could compel any business to give government orders first priority in wartime. In the meantime, he should begin to study the problems of economic mobilization, a charge further strengthened with additional legislation that created a Council of National Defense from within the cabinet. Although Wilson did not use the council, he permitted Secretary of War Newton D. Baker to appoint an advisory committee of industrial experts in December 1916. This committee provided the early direction of mobilization planning upon America’s entry into World War I.

Together the Naval Act of 1916 and the National Defense Act of 1916 culminated two decades of unsteady but consistent growth and

modernization of the American armed forces. Certainly the two acts appalled antimilitarists and noninterventionists, primarily because they believed the legislation was a frightening national affirmation of bellicosity. Some believed peacetime compulsory service would soon follow. On the other hand, militants like Theodore Roosevelt and Leonard Wood recognized that paper reform did not mean real increases in military capability unless Congress funded the shipbuilding plans and the expanded, improved Army and Guard. Whether or not Congress would do so depended upon political events beyond the control of the military establishment. As commentators of all persuasions debated the meaning of the acts, German submarines prepared to resume unrestricted warfare against Allied and neutral shipping. As silent and deadly as a running torpedo, the European war approached a United States rich with paper plans and woefully unprepared for the one war it had not foreseen.