"Liberty and Union" ~ A Walk Through the Civil War lecture series - Gettysburg College

the Sun rises but shines not wrote the poet Walt Whitman on the day after the Union Army's humiliating defeat at Bull Run on July 21st 1861 the straggling broken battalions streamed back from their collapse across the Potomac River and into Washington demoralized depressed the men appear at first sparsely and shamefaced enough appear in Pennsylvania Avenue and on the steps in basements entrances Whitman wrote they cut along and disorderly mobs summon squads stragglers companies queer-looking objects strange eyes and faces drenched the steady rain drizzles all day and fearfully worn hungry haggard blistered in the feet looking out from the White House windows President Abraham Lincoln permitted himself a rare moment of despair the casualty list from Bull Run was shocking taking both sides together there had been almost as many American casualties at Bull Run as there had been battle deaths in the entire American Revolution there were more Union casualties that do run than the United States had suffered in either of its two previous wars the war of 1812 and the Mexican War of 1846 Lincoln could only moan to one White House staffer if hell is any worse than this it has no terror for me well if he thought this would be his only trouble he was wrong Lincoln called Congress together in a special emergency session to deal with the secession crisis on July 4th 1861 three weeks before the debacle at Bull Run and they had been hopeful cooperative and confident voting Lincoln the money he needed for the army as well as the Congressional confirmation that he needed for all the actions he had taken as a chief executive from April to June but now the Bull Run debacle set off bitter and athletic wrangling in the Senate and in the House of Representatives now some of this came as might be expected from his political opponents the Democratic Party who had lost so heavily in the national elections of 1860 many of them came to the 37th Congress in July prepared to believe the worst about Lincoln and the Republicans that Lincoln wanted to make himself a dictator that Lincoln wanted to use the war as an excuse for the wholesale abolition of slavery and the release of African Americans into the northern labor market to compete with white workers that Lincoln was the tool of New England capitalists who would bankrupt every farmer in the country most of them condemned the southern states for breaking up the Union but just as many of them as quickly found ways of excusing the southerners or announcing that the southerners were actually victims who had been driven into secession by northern abolitionism Ohio's Clement Laird Vallandigham the handsomest man in Congress declared that I am and became a Western section list in other words his first loyalty was to Ohio and the old Northwest Ordinance territories after listening to the abolitionists fool and again claimed he couldn't blame the South for seceding and of Lincoln and the Republicans tried to meddle in Western affairs or if Lincoln tried to turn the war into a campaign not against southern secession but against southern slavery and through that the entire southern way of life then for land again what urge the western states to secede - what relieved Lincoln from worrying too much about the Democrats in Congress was their numbers the 1860 election had been the electoral equivalent of bull run for the Democratic Party the three-way division of the Democratic Party and the large crossover vote for Republicans in the north had left the Democrats with only four northern governorships and 42 seats from the northern states in the House of Representatives and 17 seats in the Senate then between December and May the solidly democratic states of the South seceded and withdrew their congressional delegations from Washington further increasing the Republican majorities in both houses of Congress above all in June of 1861 the most prominent of the Senate Democrats and Lincoln's one-time opponent Steven a Douglas suddenly died in Chicago leaving the Democrats without a national figure to carry their banner Lincoln was actually under greater pressure from his fellow Republicans to move more rapidly more directly and perhaps more recklessly than Lincoln wanted to move on the slavery issue the Republicans as a new party were really more of a coalition one part were old anti-slavery Democrats like Illinois's Isaac Arnold who had agreed to switch to the Republicans only because of his hatred for slavery but who refused to support any other parts of the Republican agenda especially those concerning the economy another part of the Republican coalition were old-time Whigs who were generally anti-slavery but who were interested long-term in putting into place a series of economic policy is concerned with boosting the national economy and the last part of this coalition were the anti-slavery radicals like Thaddeus Stevens of Pennsylvania Ben Wade of Ohio Zachariah Chandler of Michigan and Charles Sumner of Massachusetts for these men the Radical Republican faction nothing mattered in politics as much as abolishing slavery they saw no reason why war on southern treason well not to be easily converted into a one purpose-- war on southern slavering at the same time after all argued the radicals southern treason had been caused by the southern determination to protect slavery dig up the route they insisted and don't waste time whopping off the branches well in the abstract Lincoln agreed with the radicals but only in the abstract some of our northerners seemed bewildered and dazzled by the excitement of the hour lincoln said to his secretary john hay others seem to think that this war is to result in the entire abolition of slavery well Lincoln said he had to remind them of several basic political facts first of all while secession might be the same thing as treason slaveholding was not slaveholding was given tacit legal recognition in the Constitution and he had no authority as president to abolish it so while he could make war on secession he couldn't make war on slavery without violating the Constitution and in effect committing a form of treason himself and then there were still four states Missouri Kentucky Maryland and Delaware where slavery was still legal but states which had not joined the Confederacy any attempt by Lincoln to attach abolition to the war but very likely drive at least three of those four states into the arms of the Confederates as it was in the spring and summer of 1861 a pro Confederate governor in Missouri had almost persuaded the Missouri legislature to secede in Maryland pro-confederate mobs had rioted in the streets against federal soldiers if he alienated those border states then the Union would lose control of the Upper Mississippi River they Ohio River and even the Potomac they might possibly even lose Washington DC since Maryland surrounded the District of Columbia on three sides and then what Lincoln asked what would be the results of pursuing the abolition of slavery it would only make the rebels fight harder and it would convince pro-union southerners to support their rebel brethren and what would then become of any slaves who might be freed northern whites didn't want them especially as competitors for jobs in the cities Lincoln's own home state of Illinois had not only banned slavery since 1818 but also banned the immigration of any free black people there too and fresh from slavery these freed slaves would have no money to buy farms or give themselves a peaceful self-start in business Lincoln could only foresee a future of race riots and the ugliest forms of racial discrimination should he enlist runaway slaves as soldiers in the army and let them fight the war every advice that came to him from the professional soldiers and the politicians assured him that the moment he armed former black slaves every white soldier in the Union Army would desert and then above all Lincoln was after all an old wig much as he opposed slavery his ultimate goal was to create a vibrant national economy his election as president was a sign at least to him that slavery was being given permission to do no more expansion so that meant he needed to waste no further time or energy on it confined within the boundaries of the south it would die out of it so let time take its course slavery was on the way out the door time however gave Lincoln bull run instead an Restless Republicans in Congress who've been willing to close ranks behind Lincoln in the July special session were in an ugly and uncooperative mood once Congress assembled for his first regular session in December 1861 defeat at Bull Run confirmed the suspicions of the radicals in Lincoln's party but only the strongest and the most severe measures would successfully deal with the south and they were now ready to call for them then raid the bluff the angry Radical Republican senator from Ohio announced that the time had come to bury slavery and we didn't care he said if the war continues 30 years and bankrupts the whole nation I hope to god there will be no peace until we can say there is not a slave in this land already in August Congress had enacted a Confiscation Act which threatened the Confederates with the confiscation of any property used for the support of the war and he slaves is what they meant slaves who had been put to work on the southern war effort as laborers Teamsters cooks or personal servants in December in the regular session of Congress Congress refused to reaffirm a resident from the special summer session promising that the war would not be prosecuted with any view toward abolition at the end of December even Lincoln's own Secretary of War Simon Cameron issued a year-end report urging the freeing and the arming of any slaves who fell into Union hands Lincoln only shook his head in dismay tactics like this would make it impossible to win the war and what the radicals for God and their self-righteous are one thing was that without victory in the war not a single slave in the South ever had the slightest hope of being freed on the other hand if he could get victory in the war and get it quickly without having to raise the slavery issue then he could settle the slavery issue separately on his own political terms rather than in terms of the radicals so hardly had the embers of the Bullrun defeat cooled then Lincoln moved to reorganize his army and get it moving again as fast as possible several new military districts were created not only along the Potomac but along the Ohio River where Major General Don Carlos Buell was given command of federal troops who became known as the Federal Army of the Ohio and in Missouri were Major General Henry wager Halleck assumed command of still more federal troops who were organized as the army of West Tennessee both Buell and Halleck were cautious moderate officers neither were anti-slavery zealots Buell in fact was a Democrat and Halleck was the author of a distinguished textbook in military law but both of them were superb choices the goal in view was to reassure anxious slaveholders in Kentucky and Missouri that the federal government had no intention of meddling with slavery they would also show to wavering rebels that the federal government was pursuing a limited war respectful of their rights and property and that would induce them Lincoln hoped to rethink the rashness of secession no one Illustrated that thinking better than the man whom Lincoln's selected to command the most important of the Northern armies the one now camped in disgrace around Washington his name was George Brinton McClellan he was 34 years old second in his class at West Point in 1846 and commissioned into the elite of the Army's service the engineers he'd been a successful railroad executive since 1857 when he'd resigned from the Army and he was the very image of the Napoleonic hero in fact three states had competed to offer him command of their state troops in 1861 while the army around Washington was slouching toward defeat at Bull Run McClellan was conducting his own highly successful mini campaign in western Virginia clearing out rebel forces from the western Virginia mountains while the defeated federal army was retreating from Bull Run above all McClellan was a Philadelphia born Democrat his father in fact was a nationally known physician who had founded the Jefferson Medical College in Philadelphia he was philosophically opposed to slavery but never more than philosophically as so McClellan assured Democratic leaders and his Democratic political friends that Lincoln's war would not be fought for the sake of abolition just it seemed what the situation demanded it was not long before the newspapers began calling him the young Napoleon and two days after Bull Run Lincoln telegraphed McClellan to come to Washington and take up command of the troops that Walt Whitman had watched straggle back from Virginia at first the choice of McClellan seemed to be a stroke of genius McClellan took the beaten army camped around Washington and breathed new life into it he renamed it the Army of the Potomac and gave it the organizational shape it would have for the rest of the war now a word about that organizational shape the most important organizational unit of the Army of the Potomac and by extension of all other Civil War armies was the regiment the regiment was a unit of approximately 1,000 men organized into ten companies and commanded by a colonel most of the troops who served in the Civil War armies were volunteers which is to say that they were neither state militia nor United States regulars but a kind of half-and-half volunteer regiments were raised and recruited by individual states hence they were known by name and number according to their statement as the 69th Pennsylvania the 44th Virginia the 1st Minnesota but once these state volunteer regiments were organized they were then mustered into federal or Confederate service usually for three years for the duration and paid and fed and equipped by the federal or Confederate government's volunteer regiments were then usually given federally commissioned officers and organized into brigades usually putting four or five regiments together in a brigade to be commanded by a brigadier general and then from ADEs divisions were organized commanded by major generals and then divisions organized into core which were commanded by senior major generals and that's our military organization list and lesson for the evening because when I say that these major generals and brigadier generals and Colonels commanded these units that may not be exactly the right word the American Republic had a long habit of associating the military with aristocracy and for that reason the United States had put only the most meager resources into training and supporting its military and in the case of the Civil War it showed as McClellan talaq Buell and their Confederate counterparts struggle to organize their forces they found that officers with any military experience or military know-how were in wooly short supply and what was worse all of them had to tolerate the appointment of politically well-placed amateurs to important commands it was almost all they could do to hope that these new Napoleonic wannabes would stay one drill lesson ahead of their troops and somehow miraculously instill discipline and effectiveness into their men the raw inexperience of the Civil War Officer goes a long way to accounting for the tremendous casualty list which emerged from Civil War battles although the technology of war was changing rapidly in the middle of the 19th century for instance rifles were more accurate and at greater distances than they'd ever been before and the Civil War actually saw the introduction of repeating rifles and automatic weapons like the Gatling machine gun nevertheless the means for deploying those weapons was not in fact very well developed and poorly trained army commanders throughout the war floundered their way through the densely forested American terrain into one headlong catastrophe after another despite the introduction of the new weapons most civil war combat still took place at ranges of less than 80 yards despite innovations and assault tactics officers on both sides were rarely able to maneuver their men in any formation more than a few points above that of an armed mob that McClellan got them organized at all was therefore an accomplishment which should have made him the greatest military hero since George Washington basically the armies of the Civil War sorted themselves out into three combat arms the infantry the cavalry and the artillery the infantry was the queen of battles the infantry was the foot soldiers carrying long barreled single-shot muzzleloading rifles tralala firing a soft conical lead bullet usually of a body smashing 58 caliber it was the job of the infantry to confront the enemy's infantry to deliver fire as deadly and as concentrated in a formation as possible to disrupt the enemy's formations with this fire and then to scatter them by charging forward with a sharp triangular socket bayonets fixed to the muzzle of the rifle since most civil war rifles were muzzle loaders loading the rifle was a complicated and sometimes dangerous process called loading in nine times from the nine separate steps required for loading each time it was to be fired the cavalry were the horse soldiers although the romantic image of the cavalry was the picture of Sabres swinging knights-errant with blue and their hats smashing into each other in a gigantic scrimmage the real truth of cavalry action in the Civil War was a good deal more dull mounted soldiers in the Civil War were the pickets and the moving screens for the infantry they were used mainly for outposts and scouting duty and although the Sabre was their symbol when they fought it was mostly on foot with the carbine a shortened form of the rifle and the greatest tactical value of cavalry in the American Civil War would not come until late in the war when the armies began to realize the usefulness of lightly armed but highly mobile cavalry for raiding behind enemy lines otherwise cavalry played a surprisingly small role in the overall course of the Civil War in European armies the ratio of infantry to cavalry was one horse soldier to four infantryman in the American Civil War it was only one cavalry men to ten infantryman the artillery were the big guns from the light 12 pounder brass Napoleon's which were the maids of all work on Civil War battlefields to enormous fortification artillery the chief tasks of the artillery was defensive the artillery organized into six gun batteries was expected to begin firing on an attacking enemy at long-distance use it's heavy shot and shell to disrupt oncoming infantry and slow them down so much that the enemy infantry would be unable to meet one's own infantry would equal fire and would then turn and run few people on either side were better equipped than George McClellan to understand this dynamic he understood the weapons he understood the equipment and in November of 1861 Lincoln Tripp a dramatic step of promoting him as commander not just of the Army of the Potomac but as the general in chief of all the Union armies there were more than a few people most among Lincoln among McClellan's fellow Democrats who believed that McClellan should be in line for another kind of promotion sooner or later placed beside McClellan Lincoln looked like a bumbling amateur after all McClellan had been a professional soldier Lincoln had only ever served a few months in the state militia of Illinois McClellan was an experienced administrator and executive Lincoln had never run anything more complex than his own two-man law office if management consulting firms had existed in the 1860s not a single one of them would have hesitated in handing the presidency to George Brinton McClellan and the qualen wasted little time in coming to the same conclusion I am becoming daily more disgusted with this administration I am almost perfectly sick of it McClellan wrote in August of 1861 I receive letter after letter have conversation after conversation calling on me to save the nation by alluding to the presidency dictatorship etc and with an army behind him those were dreams which McClellan was all too well positioned to transform into reality if he had been able to do something more than just organize and that is to lead within months McClellan the administrative genius had organized the Army of the Potomac into a finely greased and world disciplined military machine of over a hundred thousand men the problem was that he showed no inclination to do anything with it as Lincoln's Navy secretary Gideon Welles remarked the autumn passed away and grand reviews and showy parades where the young general appeared with a numerous staff composed of wealthy young gentlemen and his time wore on and no blow was struck or any decisive movement attempted complaints became numerous an envy and jealousy found opportunity to be heard and no form of complaint about McClellan and his lethargy became more common than the complaint that it was deliberate it was asserted complained one constituent of michigan's radical senator Zachariah Chandler it was asserted that they army of the potomac had been drilled into an anti republican engine and that what a thousand would vote for a Republican in the suspicious eyes of the Radical Republicans what McClellan was waiting for was a created settlement to the war he was stalling for time for his Confederate friends to produce a bloodless piece which would reunite the Union but leave slavery in place by January of 1862 Lincoln had come to suspect the same thing letting McClellan alone would leave the war on one at the same time though removing McClellan might trigger a mutiny in the army Lincoln's only hope was somehow to prod McClellan into motion and for three months the President of the United States was reduced to persuading cajoling and berating his general in chief to move and then at last in the middle of March 1862 McClellan finally launched into action as he explained to Lincoln he planned to invade Confederate Virginia not by the old land route down to Bull Run but in one of the most ambitious land and water operations in the 19th century McClellan would move the entire army of the potomac by ship down the chesapeake to the James River Peninsula unload within just miles of the Confederate capital at Richmond and capture Richmond with one quick stroke and bring the rebels to the bargaining table oh it was a great plan they were strategic it was technical it was professional they'd lacked only one thing a leader was as they sometimes say a man with a great future behind him by all appearances Lee had enjoyed every advantage a well born talented Virginian could wish for and yet circumstances had snatched every one of those advantages away from him throughout his 54 years his father the famous general Light Horse Harry Lee had been a hero of the American Revolution White Horse Harry Lee was the man who offered the famous eulogy at Washington's funeral first in war first in peace first in the hearts of his countrymen Lighthorse Harry had also been spendthrift Harry and an alcoholic and when his son Robert was six years old the father fled from his creditors to the West Indies and he died without Robert ever seeing him again after a near-perfect record at West Point Lee won a coveted posting to the Corps of Engineers and in 1831 married the wealthy Mary Custis through whom he would inherit his father-in-law's estate Arlington on a hill overlooking the capital and the Potomac River it was the Custis fortune which kept the Lee's in the high society of Northern Virginia too because there was very little profit to be had from Roberts Army salary what was worse promotion in a peacetime army was agonizingly slow and Lee refused to play the political games that other officers played for advancement when war with Mexico finally brought robert e lee a chance to distinguish himself he did and won the praise of no one less than the commanding general of the old army Winfield Scott but even those achievements got Lee only so far in 1855 he transferred to the cavalry where he became the lieutenant colonel of the 2nd Cavalry by 1861 Lee had gained so little from 30 years in the army that he was seriously thinking of early retirement the outbreak of the Civil War changed that completely as one by one his fellow southern officers resigned from the Army and headed south to fight for the Confederacy all eyes in Lincoln's administration turned to Lee as an experienced officer and a Virginian to boot and as soon as Fort Sumter was fired upon a private emissary from Abraham Lincoln approached Lee and offered him full command of the United States Army at last after three decades the opportunity of his life had fallen into robert e lee's lap and like every other opportunity it turned to ashes because Lee considered himself a Virginian before anything else and his family and friends were Virginians who were preparing to secede from the union Lee himself had no particular vested interest in slavery he never actually owned any slaves because all the wealth of his family was really his wife's and the slaves owned by the Lee family were really Custis family slaves but he could not turn his sword against Virginia and the South with all my devotion to the Union and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives my children my home Lee rode on April 20th 1861 I have therefore resigned my commission in the army and save in the defense of my native state with a sincere hope that my poor services will never be needed I hope I may never be called upon to draw my sword he could never forget cow when his shiftless father abandoned the family it was the vast network of those relatives his mother's kith and kin which kept the family together and for that he felt a debt even greater than the one imposed by his oath as an officer of the United States Army and so Lee refused lincoln's offer packed his bags and headed for Richmond where Virginia commissioned him to command its state forces the other President Jefferson Davis had just as keen an appreciation of Lee's works and Davis immediately rewarded Lee with appointment as Davis's special military adviser but Davis did not realize was how disappointed Lee was with this Lee wanted to command an army on the battlefield not push a desk not move paper from the inbox to the outbox once again Robert Edward Lee had been brought to water but forbidden to drink Lee was not the only unhappy soldier in the Confederate States of America in the spring of 1862 the great rebel victory at Bear Run eight months before had not been followed by peace negotiations or by Lincoln's recognition of the South's independence oh no exactly the opposite occurred in February of 1862 in the West one of Union General Henry hallux officers a soft-spoken fast-moving but otherwise undistinguished former Army officer named Ulysses Simpson grant had descended with troops and gunboats on the two barrier forts which protected Confederate Tennessee Fort Henry and Fort Donelson and captured them both with humiliating ease by March of 1862 the Confederate Army in the West had abandoned Tennessee and was tumbling back in confusion all the way to northern Mississippi and then in April came the real shot to the jaw the federal navy under David Glasgow Farragut blasted its way up the Mississippi River and captured the Confederacy's greatest port city New Orleans drumming his fingers on a desktop in Richmond Robert Edward Lee might well wonder whether circumstances had played their final biggest joke of all on him and almost the same moment though the great Federal Army of the Potomac disappeared from its encampments around Washington and materialized a hundred thousand strong at Fortress Monroe on the tip of the James River Peninsula just seventy undefended miles southeast of Richland the Confederate Army which had been doing a little more than sitting on its laurels since Bull Run now abandoned all of Northern Virginia and frantically tried to throw itself in between the Federals and the Confederate capital the Confederate Army was commanded by one of the heroes of the Bull Run battle General Joseph II Johnston a finicky defensive minded fighter whom Lee suspected of having gained his position by favoritism and by politicking and Lee was not made any happier but Johnston's decision not to attack the Federal Army but to fight a slow defensive retreat up the James Peninsula after all Johnston argued he had only fifty five thousand men and the Federals had the advantage not only in numbers but in artillery and equipment Lee's fingers drummed faster so did those of President Jefferson Davis who now pressed Johnston to do something anything before the Federal Army surrounded Richmond itself finally on May 31st 1862 Johnston gathered himself and struck at the village of Fair Oaks the attack was uncoordinated and unsuccessful and the Confederates were forced back but there was this one ray of sunshine for Jefferson Davis Joe Johnston was badly wounded and knocked out of command in his place Davis immediately appointed Robert Edward Lee as an engineer by training Lee was best prepared for defensive warfare and many of the officers who knew him predicted that Lee would probably go to work like Johnston with purely defensive tactics to protect Richmond but the handful of people who knew Robert Ely intimately and there really were only a handful knew that there was another man beneath that reserved gentlemanly first families of Virginia exterior another man who had been burning for a lifetime for the one chance to avenge himself on circumstances Colonel Joseph Ives assured a skeptical friend about Lee if there is one man in either army Confederate or federal head and shoulder above every other in audacity it is General Lee and Lee promptly proceeded to prove it with the nerve of a high-stakes poker player Lee peeled off 8,500 men and sent them to reinforce a small Confederate Army in the Shenandoah Valley commanded by one of the heroes of the Bull Run battle Stonewall Jackson Jackson tore loose from the clutches of three small federal armies and went on a rampage through the Shenandoah Valley toward Washington a web page which knocked the entire federal government into a panic Lee then sent twelve hundred Confederate cavalrymen in a raid completely around the Federal Army and then finally on June 26 1862 Lee launched his outnumbered infantry directly at the Federal Army at the village of Mechanicsville just five miles northeast of Richmond like a muscle-bound boxer the stunned federal Colossus fell back to Gaines mill when Lee attacked them again the next day and again at Fraser's forum on June 30th and finally again at Malvern Hill on July 1st by the time he was done Lee had forced the Army of the Potomac to retreat to a defensive line backed up against the James River and they're convinced that Lee must have two hundred thousand men at hand the Union generals began howling for reinforcements and predicting doom most of the howling came from the Army of the Potomac Scamander George McClellan it had taken Abraham Lincoln months to get McClellan to move and when at last McClellan moved it was with a plan which looked to Lincoln as though McClellan was actually hoping to avoid a fight McClellan had proposed to land on the James River Peninsula work his way up to Richmond to gradually and then surround Richmond and the Confederate Army in a siege which would eventually force them to surrender without too much loss of life without too much destruction of property and without anybody talking about the need to free slaves what is surprising is how much of this plan worked McClellan's landing at Fort Monroe was unopposed the Army of the Potomac hauled itself up the peninsula with scrupulous respect for southern property including slaves and dealt with Confederate resistance with long-distance Army and artillery bombardments and slow careful engineering it was an autumn jean-robert Ely took command to the Confederate Army that McClellan's neat bloodless script began to fall apart Lee's sheer audacity throughout what became known as the seven days battles frightened McClellan on two levels first McClellan was more concerned about avoiding a defeat than winning a victory and he was now convinced that defeat was staring him in the face the second if the Confederates were displaying this kind of determined resistance that might feed the demand of Radical Republicans that the Union give up on reconciliation and go out for an all-or-nothing war including a war on slavery and so McClellan retreated drawing the Army of the Potomac into a tight semicircle around his James River supply base at Harrison's landing where he could feel safe and then when Abraham Lincoln came down to Harrisons landing on July 8th to confer with McClellan the young Napoleon handed the president the most incredible letter any American soldier has ever presented to a civilian commander-in-chief the letter known thereafter simply as the Harrison's landing letter offered no excuse no explanation from McClellan spineless military behavior so far instead the letter was full of arrogant advice to Lincoln about why the president should not use the mess on the peninsula to conclude that it was time to widen the war and move towards emancipation this said McClellan should not be a war looking to the subjugation of the people of any state at any event and surely Lincoln must have thought that given McClellan's record up to this date that was never going to happen neither confiscation of property political executions of prisoners territorial organization of states or forcible abolition of slavery should be contemplated for a moment otherwise McClellan argued threatened even any declaration of radical views especially upon slavery will rapidly disintegrate our present armies as though he the commander of those armies had nothing to do with it was helpless couldn't say anything had no power Lincoln folded McClellan's letter quietly away put it in the inside pocket of his frock-coat and returned to Washington McClellan had successfully convinced Lincoln at last not though of what McClellan had planned to convince him up instead what McClellan had convinced Lincoln of was that a McClellan needed to be removed and be that McClellan's behavior was actually the best argument available for why the war needed to be expanded to include the abolition of slavery four days after Lincoln returned from Harrison's landing he advised members of his cabinet that he intended to issue a proclamation which would emancipate the slaves we are done throwing grass at the rebels Lincoln told the press correspondent henceforth we propose trying stones the tricky part however would concern McClellan because McClellan was still outrageously popular with the Army of the Potomac and had stacked the officer corps of the Army of the Potomac with his own favorites the possibility of a military coup should Lincoln lay hands on either McClellan or southern slaves could not be dismissed so without actually relieving McClellan of command of the army Lincoln began ordering McClellan to begin detaching parts of his army and sending them back to Washington one by one there Lincoln fed them to a new army that he was forming in Northern Virginia the arming of Virginia which he put under the command this time of a no-nonsense anti-slavery General John Pope let the Army of the Potomac be eased out painlessly from under McClellan let McClellan wake up one morning like wily coyote looked down and realize there was no ground under him anymore and let John Pope win some sort of victory with this newly put together army of Virginia and the way would be clearer politically and militarily for Lincoln to announce a new direction on slavery but victory was one thing which John Pope proved unable to deliver McClellan's officers were bitterly unhappy at being transferred to Pope's command and some of them performed what amounted to military sabotage of Pope's orders for his part robert e lee gambled that he could catch pope in the open while most of the army of the potomac was still in transit from the james river destroy a large part of Pope's army and maybe even lunge at Washington so Lee and Stonewall Jackson lured the unsuspecting John Pope on to the old bull run battlefield on August 30th 1862 and proceeded to administer a defeat which sent Pope's troops fleeing in dismay back to Washington Lee then bounded northward across the Potomac into Maryland where he might alternately rally Maryland slaveholders to the Confederate flag there descend on Washington and capture it or if he listened to Stonewall Jackson begin an outright invasion of Pennsylvania think of it Jackson said transfer the war from the James River to the Susquehanna fly the Black Flag over Erie with John Pope and disgrace and the Army of the Potomac seething with discontent there was no wisdom in making any announcement about emancipating slaves when lincoln introduced the draft of an emancipation proclamation to his full cabinet on July 22nd 1862 the most encouraging advice he received was to shelve it at least until the Army of the Potomac won a clear-cut victory and to win that victory Lincoln had no one to turn to except George McClellan to the horror of his closest advisors Lincoln restored McClellan to complete command of the Army of the Potomac and ordered him to bring robert e lee to bay which to the surprise of nearly everyone McClellan did and the chief reason was a catastrophic Confederate intelligence mistake a copy of Lee's campaign orders special orders number 191 fell from a Confederate officers pocket near Frederick Maryland and was picked up on September 13th by Union soldiers who then brought it to McClellan the lost orders told the young Napoleon exactly where and when Lee was moving in Ireland and so McClellan went into high gear to ambush Lee waving a copy of the orders McClellan boasted if I cannot with these orders if I cannot whip Bobby Lee I will be willing to go home tipped off by a Confederate sympathizer Lee hurriedly concentrated his scattered army at Sharpsburg Maryland along the Antietam Creek tract with his back against the Potomac River there he awaited McClellan's onslaught except that there was one thing which George McClellan had never learned to generate and that was an onslaught instead despite every advantage in numbers and position McClellan began the Battle of Antietam on September 17th with no coherent battle plan said the Army of the Potomac into the fight in piecemeal fashion and held back over 20,000 men as a cautious reserve against who knows what as it was Lee was nearly overwhelmed by sheer Union numbers by the end of the day one-third of Lee's army thirteen thousand seven hundred men were dead wounded or missing but there were also over 12,000 Union casualties and though McClellan had 70,000 men at his disposal the thought of any form of risk any gesture of real leadership unhinged him Lee the master of the bluff held on till the end of the day on September 17th gamely keeping up appearances the next day while McClellan licked his wounds and in the dark hours of September 18th Lee and the battered Confederate Army slipped across the Potomac back into Virginia and McClellan made no real effort to pursue him Antietam was the single bloodiest day in American history and it ended with McClellan the perfect manager with the perfect resume having perfectly fumbled away every advantage still Lee had retreated it was not the best gift McClellan could have given Lincoln but it was gift enough on September 22nd Lincoln published his Emancipation Proclamation in it Lincoln threatened that if the Confederate states did not by January first and all resistance to the federal government then all persons held as slaves within any Confederate state shall be then thenceforward and forever free now for constitutional reasons lincoln was careful to justify emancipation as a necessary military act not a grand moral or philosophical gesture he was also careful to limit it to the rebellious states where military actions were unmistakably justified and that meant that the proclamation did not apply to the slaves of Kentucky Missouri Maryland or Delaware which had not joined the Confederacy and therefore were not at war with the United States nor in fact did the proclamation promise to permanently abolish the institution of slavery in the United States for those reasons the proclamation has sometimes been criticized as a reluctant or half-hearted gesture on Lincoln's part what if for instance the Confederates had decided to surrender January 1st a show up in Washington waving little white flags would Lincoln have let them keep their slaves just to get them back into the Union the answer on all counts is no Lincoln could not afford to make the Emancipation Proclamation into a sweeping decree of national abolition of slavery because he knew full well that any action he took on slavery would be challenged in the federal courts the moment the war ended if not earlier the larger the gesture the bigger the legal challenge and the more likely that his gesture would be quashed in the courts Lincoln had no choice but to keep the scope of the proclamation sharply focused on being a fit and necessary war measure since that was all with at least some kind of constitutional reasoning he could claim as his power as commander-in-chief nor is it likely that Lincoln would merely have stepped aside and allowed the Confederates to happily surrender with their slaves still at their sides this often missed in the proclamation that Lincoln also promised to lay before Congress a practical measure for emancipating the slaves of Missouri Kentucky Maryland and Delaware by offering federal compensation to slave owners in those states in effect a federal buyout either way by war or by money those two very effective causes of things Lincoln was saying that slavery was finished but what made any return to the status quo absolutely unthinkable was the provision that Lincoln made and attached to the final version of the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1st 1863 that such persons of suitable condition will be received into the armed service of the United States in other words he would not only emancipate slaves as a military War Powers decree but he would now be getting listing free northern blacks and southern slave Runaways as soldiers and once they were soldiers Lincoln would never countenance returning any of them to any form of bondage I should be damned in time and eternity for so doing he said and so over the next two years over 185,000 African Americans would rally to Lincoln's call general McClellan of course had no idea after Antietam that he had won the victory that Lincoln needed that he had provided the key that Lincoln desired for emancipating slaves but having given Lincoln that one gift unintentionally he gave Lincoln another gift unintentionally and that is he did nothing from mid-september until the end of October McClellan took no initiative to pursue Lee into Virginia even when Lincoln personally visited McClellan's camp by this time Lincoln had given up all hope that he could ever get McClellan to move McClellan he said was a great engineer when it came to a stationary engine what Lincoln really wanted by visiting the Army was to satisfy himself personally without the intervention of anybody of the purposes intentions and fidelity of McClellan his officers and the army Lincoln had heard rumors that McClellan had deliberately halted pursuit of Lee after Antietam because that was not the game that we should tire the rebels out and ourselves that that was the only way the Union could be preserved we come together fraternally and slavery be saved Lincoln preferred to see in McClellan and his inaction just another species of McClellan's excuse mongering rather than outright treason but even excuse mongering and inaction were enough for Lincoln to take action against his recalcitrant general on November 5th one day after the midterm congressional elections Lincoln fired McCulloch and replaced him with one of McClellan's corps commanders general Ambrose Burnside and on January 1st 1863 the Emancipation Park Meishan took legal effect sitting down at his desk after a long New Year's morning reception at the White House Lincoln found that after three years three hours of handshaking I could not for a moment control my arm and Lincoln worried that a shaky signature would look like he had some compunctions but then Lincoln bore down and signed the proclamation as he only rarely did with his full name Abraham Lincoln I have never in my life felt more certain that I was doing right than I do in signing this paper Lincoln said to Secretary of State William Seward Lincoln had not only done right he had transformed the Civil War he would no longer be a war to enforce a constitutional technicality about secession it would no longer be a war solely for preserving the Union and the democracy that the Union stood for he would also be a war for a particular people's freedom the freedom of a downtrodden race who could now rise from the bleak centuries of bondage and take their rightful place among their fellow Americans as free men and citizens six months later one of the first black regiments recruited after the proclamation the 54th Massachusetts would go into action against a Confederate fortification outside Charleston Harbor losing 1/3 of its men and it's white Colonel Robert Gould Shaw the regimental color bearer Sergeant William H Carney wounded in the chest and the leg would rescue the regiment's flagged limp back with it to a field hospital and collapse with these words the old flag never touch the ground boys six months before William H Carney by the laws of the United States and the decree of the Supreme Court in the Dred Scott case had not even been a citizen did not even have a flag could not join in my country tis of thee sweet land of liberty of thee I sing but now he could Sergeant carnate won the Congressional Medal of Honor for his bravery but more than that he and every other black soldier had one for themselves a country and the war was about to become a crusade

Channel: Gettysburg College

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Keywords: Gettysburg College, Civil War, Lecture, Guelzo, History

Id: UivJwMYebmI

Length: 68min 46sec (4126 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 27 2012