The 160th anniversary in 2025 of the ending of the American Civil War in 1865 has passed without recognition, which is a surprise given its significance for American political culture and, moreover, its importance to contemporaries.
This importance derived in part because of what did not happen in the conflict, and in part due to the implications of the war over the following century. The Civil War served as the closure of one age of American outcomes and the beginning of a very different one, with the outcomes a matter both of the character of America and of its place in the wider world. In 1859, it would have been remarkable to consider a decade thence in which slavery was abolished and there were federal forces in the South supporting radical Republican Reconstruction governments against hostility from much of the White population. In 1864, it would have been surprising to consider a decade thence in which the French were out of Mexico and the Russians from Alaska, while Britain had largely settled the North American Question by the Treaty of Washington of 1871. These outcomes were not solely due to the Civil War, but it played a key role in interaction with a range of other factors, including French concern about Prussian ascendancy. Yet, if the Union had not won, then there would not have been the basis for the settlement of the struggle for dominance in North America.
Whatever the argument from the disparity in resources between North and South, such victory was far from inevitable, either in military terms — as was readily apparent at the close of 1863, and, even more, 1862, in the aftermath of Lee regaining the initiative in the summer of 1862 — or in political terms. Key counterfactuals included Anglo-French intervention in the conflict and Democrat victory in the 1862 Midterm elections and/or in the Presidential election of 1864. Indeed, it was the possibility of both, and the consequences for the campaigning (and vice versa), that deserve attention.
Just as George Washington’s strategy in part related to his drive for French support, so also with the Confederate marches north in 1862 and 1863: they, in part, were designed to show the British and the French that the war would continue unless there was international mediation and that, in such a case, the Confederacy was a viable proposition, and, if the Union refused, ally. Correspondingly, the elections demonstrated Republican control in the North, and thus ensured that the war continued. The possible peace terms that the Union might offer were totally unwelcome to the Confederacy but, although this encouraged Confederate persistence, the reality of the Republicans returning for four years meant that the political option appeared closed to the Confederacy which destroyed the point in fighting on while under terrible pressure.
It was no accident that the war ended soon after Lincoln’s re-election. Unlike Grant’s offensive in Virginia, which had run out of steam, this showed that the events of 1864 could be decisive. It is disappointing that the re-election receives such little attention when compared to the campaigning of that year.
Similarly, in the War of Independence, the 1780 general election in Britain had not been decisive, because the government was re-elected, whereas the fall of Lord North’s government in March 1782 had been crucial and at a time when the American-French alliance was weakening and the Americans in no state to recapture New York or Charleston. Indeed, the political dimension of strategy requires far more attention for both conflicts. It is always of particular significance for civil wars, and the American War of Independence was one as well.
The Civil War is termed thus in part because it is one that could not be disguised in the national account, unlike the War of Independence or the post-1865 struggle against Reconstruction, each of which were also civil conflicts. In part “the” Civil War is more recognisable in terms of the American definition of conflict, a definition very much focused on formal campaigning and battles, and not, in the case of 1861-5, on the insurgency struggles and irregular warfare that occurred, notably in Appalachia and Missouri. This focus leads therefore to the American approach to civil warfare, both in the United States and more generally. That, however, underplays strands and explanations that do not focus on campaigning and battles.
One among many instances of the folly of that approach is provided by the significance of the Confederacy’s success in expanding to include Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. This very much altered the geography, politics and resource base of the war, as well as the problems posed for the Union and the possibilities offered to the Confederacy. Again, this radically altered context was due to the politics of the struggle and not to its military history which, instead, was a consequence of the former.
The salience of politics was indicated again by a key point that tends to be ignored, namely that the Confederacy held firm in a spatial sense. States did not defect even when the war went badly, as it did in 1864, although, looked at differently, this was a factor helping explain collapse in 1865. Earlier, the situation was somewhat different to the ready return to their loyalty to the Crown of many in South Carolina after the British captured Charleston in 1780. The extent to which there was no political crumbling to match Union advances was important not just politically but also militarily.
Turning more specifically to the latter, the war demonstrated the gap between resources and campaign success. The latter, instead, showed a full range of autonomous military factors, from command skills, not least reading the possibilities of the topography, to unit cohesion under pressure. At the operational level, there were serious issues in coordinating units and in maintaining control of the dynamics of movement so as to prevent exposure to surprise and, more particularly, flank attacks. These factors were made more difficult by the absence of relevant experience on the part of most commanders and troops. Those who had served in the Mexican-American War (1846-8) had experience of campaigning at a considerable distance but not of operating with the large forces deployed in the Civil War. The Mexican-American War was more relevant for the campaigning in and near New Mexico, but that was an outlier in terms of the larger-force operations, including in the Red River Campaign in eastern Texas in 1864.
There is much weight in the traditional themes of improved Union generalship by 1864 and a degree of exhaustion in Confederate campaigning by late 1864: the success in stopping Grant’s attritional campaigning in Virginia was not matched by the Confederates in Tennessee or, differently, Georgia. Yet the Red River Campaign indicated continued Union deficiencies with force projection not being matched by success in conflict.
As so often, there are problems in writing of aggregate capabilities and achievements. And yet, it is necessary to reach a conclusion. By early 1865, political options for the Confederacy had been exhausted, and Jefferson Davis’s notion of a turn in defeat to guerrilla campaigning was neither acceptable to his generals nor compatible with Confederate social norms nor with the idea of creating a new state. There was an instructive parallel to George Washington’s rejection of Charles Lee’s interest in a similar option during the War of Independence. The Confederate armies had been worn down, in part by the 1864 campaigning but also due to the extent of winter pressure from Union forces. Furthermore, comparison with European conflict in the 1860s-70s is unhelpful because the European wars were shorter and more compact. This entailed less pressure on the armies, but, even so, the Germans in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1 faced difficulties due to the unexpected length of the struggle. At the same time, the Civil War was over more speedily than that of the contemporaneous Taipeng Revolution in China, but then the latter had coincided with hostile intervention by Britain, France and Russia.
Comparative history is always difficult, not least if judgments of relative effectiveness are sought. As far as the Civil War was concerned, the Confederate forces were generally outclassed by late 1864: the Army of Northern Virginia could hold Grant but not drive or manoeuvre him back, unlike the situation in 1862 and 1863. Yet, it was the political context that remained to the fore, with Lincoln’s re-election crucial to the collapse of the Confederacy.
Jeremy Black has recently published The Civil War (St Augustine Press).
