History
The House Divided –
Supplementary Pack (AH)
8672
Spring 2001
HIGHER STILL
History
The House Divided – America
1850-65
Supplementary Pack
Advanced Higher
Support Materials


NOTES
The House Divided - America 1850-65 – Supplementary Pack
This support material package is to be used in conjunction with the pack published in
November 2000 (‘The House Divided – America 1850-65’, number 8191) and the
Historiographical support pack published in January 2001 (number 8545). It looks at
a number of historical interpretations that students should be aware of when studying
this topic.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
INTRODUCTION
Writing on the American Civil War has, until recently, been characterised by a degree
of partisanship not common amongst British historians. This is hardly surprising,
given the scale of the conflict and that justification for the terrible slaughter had to be
found. The notion of the ‘Lost Cause’ and romanticism about a rural Southern idyll
that probably never existed, have endured throughout much of the twentieth century.
The myth was popularised by films such as ‘Gone with the Wind’ which was as
inaccurate a twentieth century interpretation of the period as had been Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s book, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ in 1851.
‘Almost as soon as the first shot had been fired at Fort Sumter on 12 April, 1861,
Americans rushed to explain why their ‘Great Experiment’ in democracy had failed to
produce a compromise to the crisis as it had previously achieved in both 1820 and
1850.’
Opinions on issues such as slavery, life in the ante-bellum South, the causes of the
war and the reasons for the ultimate victory of the North have swung like a pendulum
from one extreme to the other. Again, this is hardly surprising as :
‘No historian writes in isolation from the work of his or her predecessors nor can the
historian stand aloof from the insistent pressures, priorities and demands of the
present. Though historians address the past, they always do so in ways that are
shaped……..by the society and systems of their own day.’ (1)
This can be illustrated by a brief look at how Americans have interpreted their ‘fiery
trial’.
In the immediate post Civil War era, history, as in the time of the Romans, was
written mostly by the victors. There was a belief that the South had caused the war
and that the social, economic, political, demographic and military superiority of the
North had rightly crushed the upstart South which had received its just desserts. An
interesting point to note is that, at this time, little consideration was given to an
analysis of the role of the black man in the conflict, and this trend was to continue
until after the Second World War. Just as the gallant, if ill-fated, charge of the 54th
Massachusetts regiment under Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, had awakened
Northerners to the role the blacks could play in the contest, so it was the black
contribution to US victory in World War II which caused historians to re-examine the
role of the Blacks in the Civil War.
Attempts were made in the period up to 1900, to see the war from a Southern
perspective. The writings of ex-President Jefferson Davis (‘The Rise and Fall of the
Confederate Government, 1881’) and ex Vice President Alexander Stephens (‘A
Constitutional View of the Late War between the States 1868-70’) were ex post facto
justifications for the actions of the individuals themselves and the South as a whole
and were dismissed as merely trying to apportion blame to someone else.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
1
However, the dominant pro-Northern view was to be challenged at the start of the
twentieth century, with the emergence of a pro-Southern interpretation which was to
last until after the ending of World War Two. The main characteristic of the school
was ‘an all pervasive and immensely potent pro-Southern bias which dominated the
profession until the middle of the twentieth century’(2).
The main proponents of this school of historiography were Ulrich B Phillips and his
students. In his book ‘American Negro Slavery’ (1918) and ‘Life and Labour in the
Old South’ (1928), Phillips tried to define the major differences between North and
South as well as discuss the nature of ante-bellum slavery.
A new twist to this school of thought was added in the 1920s by Charles and Mary
Beard, who sought to move the debate beyond the confines of the slavery issue. Their
economic interpretation of the causes of the war opened up new lines of historical
enquiry.
The image this created of a superior, rural yeoman farmer of the pre Civil War period
and the implicit superiority of agrarian over capitalist economics was given further
impetus with the American slide into Depression after 1929, trenchant testimony to
the view of R.C Richardson noted above.
The pendulum began to swing back from this extreme position in the 1950’s with
writings by such as David Potter and Richard Hofstadter who began to question ‘the
precious myth of Southern agrarianism.’ (3)
In an attempt to counteract the dominance of the Phillips’ School, historians such as
Kenneth Stampp and Stanley Elkins opened up new lines of research, new evidence
was sought and found and, at last, the voice of the black man was given its proper role
with the work of John Hope Franklin who argued for history to include the black
perspective.
The 1960s saw a remarkable change. The backdrop was the Civil Rights movement
led by Martin Luther King junior. The Civil War was exploded and every particle
minutely dissected to try to find the definitive reasons for the war. From this
micro-examination has emerged a new school of history, less sectionally orientated
and seeking an overview of the cause of the greatest tragedy to beset the USA – a
view based on the research of the 1960s and culminating in works such as ‘Battle Cry
of Freedom’ (1988) by James McPherson and ‘Reconstruction’ (1988) by Eric Toner.
Writing on the American Civil War truly indicates that:
‘the study of history is concerned not with dead facts and sterile, permanent verdicts
but with dialogues, disagreements and controversies amongst its presenters.’(4)
REFERENCES
(1) Richardson, R.C – quoted in Tulloch: The Debate on the American Civil War
Era, Manchester University Press, 1999 (ISBN 07190 49385)
(2) Tulloch, Hugh: op cit p.10
(3) Ibid p15
(4) Richardson, R.C quoted in Tulloch op cit p.viii
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
2
THE ISSUE OF SLAVERY
By the very nature of the topic, writing about the issue of slavery has been both
partisan and contentious. The pre- Civil War debate between supporters and
opponents of slavery can be said to have continued after the war was over.
In the period up to 1900, again it was the Northern view – that slavery was bad and, in
Lincoln’s words ‘had somehow caused the war’ (1) – which predominated.
However at the start of the twentieth century a new school of thought, associated with
Ulrich B Phillips, emerged which viewed the ‘Old South’ as an idyllic place in which
both slavery and the plantation system played an important part.
The thrust of Phillips’ argument was that the institution of negro slavery was the
South’s response to the invention of the cotton gin and the need to create a new labour
organisation to cope with the potential dramatic increases in output. He contended
that the institution was more social than economic and that it was a kindly, not a harsh
regime. The system was uneconomic yet the South stuck with it in an effort to protect
the slaves from themselves and thus emerged the picture, in Phillips’ interpretation, of
the master as a father figure. To abolish slavery, so this school of thought went,
would result in one of two consequences. Either the black would revert to savagery
(from which slavery had elevated him) or there would be a race war in the South.
In this interpretation, northerners were generally held to be ignorant of the unseen
threads which held the South together in a very delicate tapestry. Phillips thus held
slave-owners in high regard and argued that their attitudes were based on an
aristocratic belief in ‘noblesse oblige’.
These findings were produced in two volumes – the first, published in 1918, entitled
‘American Negro Slavery’ and the second ‘Life and Labour in the Old South ‘(1929).
What is remarkable is that the views were to dominate American historiography until
the 1950s.
In the ‘Debate on the American Civil War Era’ (1999), Hugh Tulloch is dismissive of
such an interpretation referring to it as ‘insidious nonsense’ and ‘historical duplicity’
(2). His justification for such a damning indictment is the methods used by Phillips.
His research was limited and highly selective, with only 200 plantations, all in the
deep South and all having more than 100 slaves, which were atypical of the Southern
pattern of slaveholding. Phillips started from the assumption that slavery was, ipso
facto, good for both white and black alike and saw the institution exclusively through
the eyes of the slave-owner. As a result Tulloch concludes that Phillips’ work
‘remains useful for his insights into the mind of the Slave master’s paternalistic
rationale’ (3).
The first serious attack on Phillips’ work in the USA came in 1956, with the
publication of ‘The Peculiar Institution’ by Kenneth Stampp.
Unlike Phillips, Stampp claimed that slavery was not a by-product of the invention of
the cotton gin. Rather it had been deliberately engineered by the South. In addition,
he took issue with Phillips’ conclusion that slavery was unprofitable.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
3
Stampp argued that though the institution might have been inefficient, it was
profitable due to a combination of unprecedented world demand, and the ability of the
South to meet that demand because of the availability of new land in the mid and
western USA. Slavery, Stampp also attested, provided a very mobile work force with
every slave facing the prospect of being sold at least once in their lifetime, to owners
in other areas.
Another criticism levelled by Stampp was the limited nature of Phillips’ evidence,
arguing that only 1% of owners owned more than 100 slaves. Stampp concluded that
the slave was a maltreated victim of a profitable economic system.
Not surprisingly, the work of Stampp was criticised by others, both at the time and
later Tulloch notes:
‘Stampp tended to use traditional literary sources rather than quantify, and literary
sources can at times be misleading and unrepresentative’ (4).
In 1959, Stanley Elkins wrote ‘Slavery: a Problem in American Institutional and
Intellectual Life’. His aim was to see slavery through the eyes of the slave and to find
a solution to the paradox of slave opposition to the institution on the one hand and the
lack of serious slave revolts on the other. He argued, using research based on the
experience of concentration camp survivors, that the reason for such docility was the
all embracing and crushing nature of slavery, where all decisions, affecting every
aspect of the life of the slave, were made on the slave’s behalf by others. He believed
that slavery was a brutal institution that handicapped the slave’s personality and led to
‘regression and infantalisation’ (5).
In this version, the slave is not the happy character of Phillips but of ‘Sambo’ – docile
but irresponsible – who shared his displeasure at his lot in life by acts of minor
sabotage, stealing etc. At all times, he had to balance acquiescence and resistance.
Thus, the Elkins thesis had replaced the old concept of racial inferiority of the black
slave with the new concept of psychological handicap inflicted by the total institution
of slavery.
Criticism levelled at Elkins included those of Eugene Genovese who had a much
simpler solution to the question of the lack of slave revolts in the ante bellum USA.
Given that the whites controlled all possible forms of communication and state
institution, police, courts, legislative etc., then rebellion would have been tantamount
to committing suicide.
It was in an attempt to settle, once and for all, the issue of the profitability of slavery
that Fogel and Engerman turned to an analysis of cold, impartial, statistics as the
source of evidence. They criticised Stampp’s conclusions on the basis that, without
satisfactory statistical evidence, he had labelled the negro as incompetent. In ‘Time
on the Cross’ (1974), they analysed vast volumes of statistics and concluded that:
a) slavery was essentially benign – the emphasis on slave whippings had been
greatly exaggerated, they argued; and
b) slavery was 35% more profitable than free labour on Northern farms; and
c) slave accommodation was better than that of New York workers in 1893.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
4
In this interpretation, the slave was socialised, not brutalised and the carrot replaced
the stick.
It is hardly surprising that their findings were almost universally criticised. The
grounds for this criticism were varied. On the one hand, their methodology was open
to question. It seemed as if they had worked backwards from consequences to causes.
They had developed a theoretical model and then sought evidence to prove it, and
more damagingly for them, had ignored contradictory evidence. Their claim that
slave accommodation was better was shown to be based on an exaggeration of 50%
on their part, of average, slave cabin size compared with ‘immigrant slums in the
depths of a major depression’ (7) in New York.
Again it was shown that their average of 0.7% whippings per hand per year (which
allowed them to conclude that slavery was benign), ‘was based on the records kept
over a period of two years on a single plantation.’ (8). What they failed to see was
that the certainty of punishment was more important than its application. Knowledge
of the consequences of their actions may have dissuaded slaves from taking a
particular course of action.
In addition, the hierarchy of jobs, Fogel and Engerman identified in ‘Time on the
Cross’ (field hand, overseer etc) was not the same as a career structure in the free
labour economy and crucially, that the slave had no choice in his career path. Further,
their identified incentives like some extra land for the slaves’ own use was not the
same as bonus payments to free Northern agricultural workers.
In ‘Reckoning with Slavery’, edited by David Paul in 1976, two fellow
econometricians, Gutman and Sutch, destroyed the arguments put forward in 1974,
arguing amongst other points about the flawed mode of Fogel and Engerman and their
selective use of the available statistical evidence. The use of rewards and incentives
does not ipso facto prove that coercion was unimportant in making slaves work hard.
Force, or the threat of it, was fundamental and all other methods secondary.
Indeed turning Fogel and Engerman against themselves, Gutman and Sutch quoted:
‘The object of all punishment should be, first, for correction to deter the offender from
the repetition of an offence; from fear of the like certain punishment; and second, for
example to others, showing them that if they offend they likewsie will receive certain
punishment. And these objects and ends of all just punishments can be better attained
by the certainty than by the severity of punishment’. (9)
In 1972 appeared ‘The Slave Community’ by John Blassingame. His view of slavery
was based on the study of the slave family and its culture, which survived despite all
of the difficulties that it faced.
This view was further extended by the writing of the Marxist historian, Eugene
Genovese who published ‘Roll Jordan Roll’ in 1976. He borrowed ideas from
Phillips, Elkins and Fogel and Engerman to show that the greater the stability within
the slave family, the less resistance they offered to white control. Of course
ultimately the whites could have the final say- as the threat of sale and separation
hung over every slave family like a sword of Damocles.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
5
By its nature, the debate on slavery will go on. What makes the study so difficult is
the lack of prima facie evidence from the ante-bellum South. Given the almost total
lack of slave education this is hardly surprising. What can be concluded is that the
rose-tinted view of Phillips has been exploded in the last half of the twentieth century
and that historians are still trying to come to terms with the multi-faceted institution
and its effects on black and white alike.
REFERENCES
1) Basler R.P – The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University
Press, 1953)
2) Tulloch, H – The Debate on the American Civil War Era (Manchester University
Press, 1999 p38)
3) Tulloch, H – op cit p.40
4) Tulloch, H – op cit p.44
5) Elkins, S – Slavery a Problem in American Institutional and Intellectual Life
(Chicago, 1959) Quoted in Tulloch, p.47
6) Fogel and Engerman – Time on the Cross (London, 1974)
7) Tulloch, H – op cit p.56
8) Tulloch, H – op cit p.56
9) Fogel and Engerman – quoted in ‘Reckoning with Slavery’, ed. by D. Paul
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
6
THE CAUSES OF THE WAR
As is now to be expected, debate on the reasons why war broke out in April 1861,
show all the signs of bias and partisanship seen in other areas. Again the pattern is
repeated in the immediate post-war period being dominated by mono or bi-causal
explanations which favoured the North, to a more pro-Southern account in the first
half of the twentieth century, to a much more in depth analysis of the complex and
overlapping reasons which led to ‘the war between the states.’
President Lincoln was in no doubt as to the cause of the war. He believed that the
issue of slavery and the actions of the South led directly to war:
‘One of them (the sections) would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the
other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.’ (1)
However, no sooner was the last shot fired than pro-Southern accounts began to
appear. In 1866 ex-President Buchanan, in the school of single cause, argued that the
war had resulted from the actions of ‘irresponsible politicians’ in both South and
North, though largely Northern. In Mr Buchanan’s Administration on the Eve of
Rebellion he attacked Northern politicians and abolitionists for their interference in
the slavery question arguing that they knew nothing of the system and that, ironically
echoing the Republican doctrine, slavery was on the road to ‘ultimate extinction’ and
thus he concluded that to the war was unnecessary. Needless to say, there is a
considerable element of trying to escape any responsibility on his part for the outbreak
of the conflict.
Leading Southern politicians were also quick to go to press. Ex- Vice President of the
Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, published between 1868 and 1870 the two volume
‘A Constitutional View of the Late War between the States’. Unsurprisingly, given his
role during the war, he adopted the position that the war had not been fought on the
South’s part in defence of slavery, but on the constitutional principle of the defence of
states’ rights.
Jefferson Davis, ex -Confederate President, threw his hat into the ring in 1881 with
the publication of his memoirs, ‘The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Governmen’t.
He used his lawyer’s training to put the blame for the war and defeat at every door but
his own. Apart from justifying his conduct, he laid the responsibility for the war at
the door of the Republicans accusing them of pursuing an aggressive policy, which
drove the South to secession in order to increase Northern political, social and
economic dominance over the South. His argument was that the South had been
forced into war in order to defend the principle of the Constitution of 1787. It should
be borne in mind that, at the time of publication, Davis had been held in jail and that
until 1877, the South had been ruled by Northern ‘carpetbaggers’. It was only with
the ‘redemption of the South’ in that year that responsibility for state and local
government was fully restored to Southern politicians.
However debate on the causes of the war was not confined to the USA. The German
writer, Karl Marx, saw in the war the classic Marxist view of conflict between the
owners of capital (and political influence) and the majority of the population; a
conflict which would see the triumph of the bourgeois revolution, quickly followed by
the proletarian revolution.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
7
Thus until the start of the twentieth century, the North assumed that it had right (as
well as might) on its side whilst Southern’ accounts wallowed in the romance of ‘the
Lost Cause.’
In an attempt to broaden the debate on the origins of the Civil War, Charles and Mary
Beard adopted a new approach, in ‘The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution’
(1913) and ‘The Rise of American Civilisation’(1927). They saw the North as driven
primarily by economic motives and that consequently the war had resulted from the
friction generated by an agrarian economy (the South) on the one hand and the
developing industrial/urban economy of the North on the other, and war was thus
inevitable. This interpretation coincided with the work of Phillips in rewriting the
history of the South and gave some credence to his conclusions.
The 1930s witnessed the emergence of the revisionist school of thought associated
with J.R. Randall and Avery Craven. Far from seeing the war as a ‘crusade’ to
liberate black men and to perpetuate the Union, this school viewed the conflict as
unnecessary, having no major cause and was due to, in the words of Randall: ‘a
blundering generation.’ (2)
Tulloch in his critique of the revisionist school notes that these writers ‘were
determined to reverse the defeat of Appomattox and win the historiographical battle’.
(3)
Both Randall and Craven believed that slavery would have died out, if it had been left
alone. The reason why this scenario was not fulfilled was due to the actions of
abolitionists whom Craven accused of conjuring up ‘an artificial creation of inflamed
minds.’ (4). Nor did the politicians escape their wrath. This ‘blundering generation’
of the 1850s, had pursued its own selfish political agendas which led ultimately to
conflict in 1861. Their chief bete noir was Abraham Lincoln whom Craven accused
of deliberately engineering the war in 1861 by forcing the South to fire on Fort
Sumter.
In an attempt to redress the imbalance which had appeared, David Donald in 1960
argued that Lincoln had always been extremely cautious and slow to move on all
major issues facing him – issues such as the re-supply of Fort Sumter and the
Emancipation Proclamation – and that to accuse him of deliberately engineering war
in 1861 was a non sequitur. This line of argument is also to be found in Donald’s
‘Lincoln’ published in 1995.
The rehabilitation of Lincoln’s reputation continued with the work of Allan Nevins
and his multi - volume history of the Civil War. Here began the synthesis of all the
different approaches of the former writers along with the use of new historical
evidence and research. This more inclusive approach examining all the threads which
produced the final conflict was continued by Eric Foner, who sought to show how the
philosophy and programme of the Republican Party made it less likely to play the role
of compromising agent and to stand firm on its interpretation of the Constitution and
their view of where the USA ought to be heading. These ideas were published in
1970 in ‘Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men’.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
8
This theme has been continued by the prolific writings of James McPherson who has
produced single volume studies of the war – ‘Battle Cry of Freedom’ (1988) – as well
as detailed studies – ‘What they fought for’ (1994) – and analysis of the role of
Abraham Lincoln – ‘Abraham Lincoln and the Second American Revolution’ (1991).
Throughout all of these McPherson’s scholarship is characterised by the fact that there
is no single explanation for any event and that chance and circumstance also played
their part.
A British historian Brian Holden Reid, has also given much thought to the origins of
the American Civil War. In the article ‘Lincoln and the crisis at Fort Sumter
Re-examined’ (5) he argues that many of the crucial decisions concerning the
re-supply of the Fort had already been taken by President Buchanan. His failure to
issue clear instructions to fort commander Major Robert Anderson left the latter with
too much discretion (it was Anderson who decided to abandon Fort Moultrie and
concentrate all his forces at Fort Sumter). Also Buchanan failed to press home the resupply of the fort by ‘The Star of the West’ in early January 1861, and this meant that
it was less likely that the Confederate authorities at Charleston would agree to
Lincoln’s attempts to re-supply in April and more likely that such an attempt would
be met with open resistance. Reid also highlights the inherent weaknesses of the
Constitution of the time. Although Lincoln was elected in November 1860 it was five
months before he assumed office and therefore power. He was helpless to stop
Southern secession as only President Buchanan had the power but he was unwilling to
use it. Such hindrances all compounded the crisis facing the USA after Lincoln’s
election. Even once sworn in, Lincoln found out, according to Reid, the limit of
presidential authority. Issuing orders and their being executed are not one and the
same. He points to the failure of the President to re-supply Fort Pickens off the
Florida coast as a case in point. Thus, Reid would argue that it was not possible for
Lincoln to entrap the South at Fort Sumter and thus engineer war.
His thesis is further developed in the work ‘The Origins of the American Civil War’
(1996) (6) in which Reid argued that political differences by themselves between
North and South could not explain the origins of the conflict. He views the decade of
the 1850s as crucial. This was when there were tensions, crises and increasing
violence which led to the position that neither side would retreat and both would
accept war, rather than compromise which had been possible only ten years before.
An interesting feature of the Reid analysis is that he takes the origins of the war up to
the Emancipation Proclamation of September 17th 1862. He does this to explain why
the war, which Lincoln always viewed on a global, as well as a national scale, did not
spread beyond the boundaries of the USA. Self-interest and national calculation
always seemed likely to keep Britain neutral and the Emancipation Proclamation
sealed the fate of foreign intervention.
Thus the debate and arguments will continue. What is certain is that the simple,
single cause of the war no longer holds any attraction to the student of the American
Civil War.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
9
REFERENCES
1) Basler, R.P- The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (Rutgers University Press,
1953) The Second Inaugural Address
2) Randall, J.R – ‘ a blundering generation’ quoted in The Causes of the Civil War
by Kenneth Stampp (New Jersey,1963)
3) Tulloch, H – The Debate on the American Civil War Era (Manchester University
Press, 1999) p. 127
4) Craven, A – quoted in Tulloch op cit p.130
5) Reid, B.H – Lincoln and the crisis at Fort Smuttier Re- Examined, History,
Volume 77, February 1992, Historical Association
6) Reid, B.H – The Origins of the American Civil War (Longman, 1996)
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
10
WHY THE NORTH WON
Writing in the immediate aftermath of defeat, Southerners took comfort firstly in the
idea of the ‘lost cause’ and then in the inevitability of defeat due to the overwhelming
advantages of the North. Indeed such a towering figure in the Confederacy as Robert
E Lee firmly believed in the idea of Southern inferiority in material terms and the lack
of foreign aid and recognition. Such a view of inevitable Northern victory formed the
basis of the ideas of the historian Richard Current.
Also, CP Roland in his book ‘The Confederacy’ (1960) argued that Southern defeat
was inevitable due to the superior economic resources of the North, though this view
has been challenged by Emory Thomas in his ‘The Confederate Nation 1861-65’,
published in 1979. He noted, amongst other weaknesses, the failure of the
Confederate supply system, the lowering of Southern morale as a result of Northern
incursions especially those of Sherman, the increasing rate of desertion as reasons for
defeat – what he calls ‘the tactics of total war which produced despair and weakened
the Southern will to continue the struggle to be a nation.’ (1).
Even David Donald in a series of essays he collated under the heading Why the North
Won the Civil War, 1960, believed in the overwhelming northern superiority as an
explanation for northern victory though he too believed that the South had failed due
to too much democracy.
This inevitability thesis was questioned by the leader of the big battalions, Grant, in
his Memoirs (2), published in 1882 where he argued that Northern success had never
been taken for granted.
This belief in Northern superiority as the decisive factor in explaining Northern
victory, has also been challenged by writers like James McPherson, who believed
that, although a necessary point of Northern victory, it was not sufficient reason alone
to explain Northern success.
McPherson goes on to argue that contingency and chance also were important, citing
events like the wounding and subsequent death of Lee’s trusted lieutenant, Stonewall
Jackson at Chancellorsville and the timing of the presidential election, speculating on
the outcome of that contest if it had been held prior to Sherman’s capture of Atlanta
and Thomas’s success against Jubal Early in the Shenandoah Valley in October 1864.
McPherson also sees the seeds of Southern defeat in her failure to manage her
economy and finances properly. Rampant inflation ate away at the sinew of Southern
life and support for the war, leading in part to the collapse of Southern morale and the
will to continue with the struggle. The writer, Clement Eaton also argued that the
collapse of the Confederate financial system was an explanation for her defeat.
From his studies (3) McPherson concludes that soldiers on both sides were highly
motivated, Northerners fought from a sense of duty, whilst Southerners fought for
honour and the need to defend their homes from an external threat. On both sides
soldiers also fought for each other and feared that by their individual action, they
might let their comrades down. External pressures from the North and the internal
weaknesses within the Confederacy coincided to seal Southern defeat.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
11
Much emphasis has been put on the role of the military leaders of the North and
South. Even more than 100 years on from the conflict, the towering figure of Robert
E Lee casts a long shadow over American historiography. From the fawning god-like
worship of the four volume biography of Lee by Douglas Southall Freeman, to the
more balanced and more critical one by Emory Thomas published in 1995, Lee stands
like a monument to the south and her cause.
This over-concentration on one man, whom it should be noted never wrote his
autobiography nor uttered any critical comments at the time of the war till his death in
1870, has overshadowed the role of the likes of Grant and Sherman. Lee was
regarded as the greatest general whilst Grant and Sherman merely led the Northern
juggernaut to ultimate victory. This pays a great dis-service to both of these men.
Two British military writers, JFC Fuller and Basil Liddell Hart, writing in the
aftermath of the carnage of World War I, did much to rehabilitate the reputation of the
two Northern generals. In two works ‘The Generalship of US Grant’ (1929) and
‘Grant and Lee’ (1933) Fuller was highly critical of Lee of whom he accused of
ignoring von Clauswitz’s dictum that ‘war was just a continuation of politics by other
means’. (4). Lee, he argued, failed to grasp the political implications of the war and
singularly failed to act as a military adviser to President Davis, his commander-inchief. He also tried to redress the balance concerning the losses sustained by both
men, showing that, proportionately, Lee (20%) lost more men in battle against Grant
(16%) in 1864-5. However, in this he has been less successful, perhaps, as the
epithet, which still haunts Grant, is that of the ‘butcher’. What Fuller tried to do for
Grant, Liddell Hart attempted for Sherman. Here was the genius, according to Liddell
Hart, who grasped the nettle of total war – his famous dictum being ‘war is hell’. If
Grant was the originator of the plan (though credit should also go to Lincoln and
former general-in-chief Winfield Scott), Sherman was the surgeon who skilfully cut
open the underbelly of the Confederacy and allowed it to bleed to death both
militarily and on the home front. It is significant that at the victory parade in
Washington, held in the aftermath of Lincoln’s funeral, that the greatest cheer was
reserved for Sherman.
The role of politics in the conflict has also been examined as a possible explanation
for Northern Victory. Certainly David Potter, in his essay published in Donald’s
‘Why The North Won The Civil War’, argues that the Northern two-party system
helped the war effort by managing political conflict. Phillip Palusan is critical of the
interference in the war effort by the Committee on the Conduct of the War (‘The
Presidency of Abraham Lincoln’, 1994). Emory Thomas in his work ‘The
Confederate Nation’ also sees, in the political structure of the south, a weakness. The
South had left the Union to enable its constituent parts to make their own decisions
but the war produced centripetal forces, allowing Richmond to accrue more and more
power, which in turn produced more political dissent from governors such as Brown
and Vance. Few writers today, however, would agree with the Frank Owsley
argument of 1925 that states’ rights were the Achilles heel of the South and that this
doctrine was the rock on which the hopes of the confederacy perished.
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
12
Other explanations of Southern defeat have looked at the failure of the South to win
either foreign help or recognition. The starting point here has to be Owsley’s ‘King
Cotton Diplomacy’ (1931). He argues that the South had become convinced of the
power of cotton to exert sufficient pressure on London and Paris to force intervention
to keep the white gold flowing. However in an article in ‘History Today’ of March
1990, the writer, John Pelzer, concludes that economic profit and self-calculation
were more than enough to counter the temporary (albeit severe) effect of the cotton
embargo. In ‘Guns for Cotton’ (1996) Thomas Boag has calculated that the value of
Confederate trade to Britain during the war totalled some $200M. However Britain
doubly benefited by her position of supplier of arms to the North as well.
Another vital contribution to Union victory, though only one more recently
recognised, is the role of the black. It should be stated that blacks alone did not win
the war, but their contribution, especially during the grim months of the summer of
1864, might have made the difference between victory and stalemate.
Joseph Glatthaar has argued that the decision of the Federal Government to hire
blacks for wages meant that their deployment in other areas could not long be denied.
(Indeed, blacks served throughout the war in the Union navy.) He argues, as does
McPherson, that emancipation was a bold stroke, depriving the Confederacy of a great
resource and at the same time converting it into one for the Union. In addition, with
the reduction of black labour in the South, due to the absence of effective overseers,
Blather argues that this contributed significantly to Southern defeat.
As Lincoln wrote in August 1863,
‘There will be some black men who can remember that, with silent tongue and
clenched teeth and steady eye and well-poised bayonet, they have helped mankind on
to this great consummation’. (5)
The final area upon which historians have concentrated is on the respective roles of
Presidents Davis and Lincoln. Most agree whether contemporaries or historians that
Davis was not the best choice for the job. He was too aloof and stubborn and tended
to take all criticism personally. He significantly contributed to Southern defeat by
acting as his own military adviser and ignoring the advice of others. He did little to
sell either himself, his government, or his government’s policies to the people. As
Thomas states ‘Outside of the capital Southerners expressed their despair by resisting
taxes, hiding their livestock and produce from impressment officers and tax-in-kind
collectors, and damning the government which had led them into such folly.’ (6)
On the other hand, historians have praised the role played by Abraham Lincoln, both
in the field of politics and strategy. David Potter argued, as did T.Harry Williams in
‘Lincoln and his Generals’ (1952) that Lincoln had a good grasp of strategy and
quickly realised that possession of enemy territory was less significant than the
destruction of the enemy’s army. However, it would also have to be admitted that, in
the words of Archer Jones,
‘both governments also recognised the political significance of military success and
failure’. (7)
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
13
It could be argued that, with the appointment of Grant as General-in-Chief in early
1864, Lincoln had found his military shadow. Potter, Donald and McPherson have all
lauded Lincoln as the consummate politician, pragmatic in his approach, yet
self-effacing. One of the major differences between Davis and Lincoln was the
latter’s ability to act decisively when needed.
Whether you agree with David Potter’s view that had North and South swapped
Presidents then the South might have won is up to you to decide.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
1) Thomas,E – The Confederate Nation (Harper Torchbooks, New York, 1972)
p.284
2) Grant, U,S – Personal memoirs of US Grant (1885) Reprinted Da Capo Press,
New York 1982
3) McPherson, James – What they fought for (Lousiana State University Press,
1994)
4) Von Clauswitz - On War
5) Basler, R.P.- The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Rutgers University
Press, 1953, Volume 6 p.410
6) Thomas E – The Confederate Nation pp. 284-5
7) Boritt, G.S. – Why The South Lost, 1994
History: The House Divided – Supplementary Pack (AH)
14