My
the Confederacy Lost
JAMES M. MCPHERSON
)
~
James <"vI.McPherson,
one of America'sforemost
the rebellious southern states left the Union
authorities on the Civil War, argues that
and formed
perceived the Black Republican party as a revolutionary
the Confederacy
threat t~ their slave-based way of
life. For ivIcPherson, secession was therefore "a pre-emptive
the Black Republican
revolution from engulfing
the South."
was dedicated to saving slavery, both as a multibillion
race control, cannot be doubted.
TIle Confederates
bled the United States Constiwtiatl
ment specifically guaranteed
rebel vice president Alexander
eracy stood for.
"Our
to prevent
That the new Confederacy
wrote a constitution
that closely resem-
save for one cmcial difference: the Corifederate docurights. In Savannah,
Stephens made it unmistakably
new government
that oj equatity in the Declaration
counterrevolution
dollar labor system and a means of
slavery and affirmed states'
H.
because they
is founded
Georgia,
clear what the Confed-
upon exactly the opposite idea [from
of Independence);
its foundations
are laid, its comer-
stone rests, upon the great tmth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery
-
subordination
new government,
philosophical,
to the superior race -
is his natural and normal condition.
is the first in the history oj the world based upon this great physical,
and moral trllth. "
From the olltset, this new government
, mOlley, gllns, facton'es, food,
was beset with internal problems: it lacked sOllnd
railroads, arid harmonious
political leadership. Still, with its
excellent gel1erals and soldiers, the pos~'ibilit}' of foreigrl intervention,
tages, the COI~federacyfaced better vdds in its II/arfor independence
colvnies,
AlcPhersvn
TIlis, our
~r-71}', then,
examines
did the Cvr~federacy
earlier explallatiolls
and other advarl-
tharl had the .:'imericarl
,~o down to defeat? In the next seleerioll,
-
404
that the IVorth had "the strongest b,zcral-
ions, " that che South died of internal dissent and loss of will-
andfinds them lacking.
He puts forth a cogent and convincing argument for rebel defeat chat reflects an important
body of modem thinking abow che war. T7lat thinking stresses che overriding importance
of military operations, contending chat ultimately the war was won or lost on the battlefield. As Lincoln himself said, it was upon "the progress of ollr arms" that everything else
depended -
public and soldier morale and political, economic, and social stability. To
explain why the Confederacy lost (the "South" didn't lose, becallsefour southern states
and one hundred chousand sOllthern men fought for the Union), :ylcPherson offers the
theory of contingeruy -
the idea that at certain crncialpoints in military operations, either
side could have won. He discussesfour such "moments of contingency, " or turning points.
TIle first occurredin the summer of 1862 when it seemed that the South would triumph
on the field of arms. The second came in thefall of 1862 when military fortunes swung
back in favor of the North. The third took place in July
1863 when the Union won
simultaneous victories at Gettysbllrg and Vicksburg. And the fourch came in the summer
of /86-1 when the Union war machine bogged down, and northern rnoraleplummeted as
a consequerzce;for a time, it appeared that Lincoln wOllld not be reelecredand that a
Democrat wOllld become president and negotiate peace with the Cmfederacy. BLIt Union
military victories in Georgia and Virginia hardened northern will to fight on, which
"clinched mattersfor the LYorth."
iVlcPhersongoes on to describe che war's most important consequerues -
the death of
slavery and secession, the transformation of the country from a loose confederation of states
and regiotlSinto an indivisible nation, a~d/he triumph of the northern vision of America
and the corresponding loss of the sowhern vision. T7lis is state-ofrhe-art analysis, excerptedfrom :ylcPherson'). PlIlitzer prize-winning Battle Cry of Freedom: The Civil
War Era (1988).
GLOSSARY
ANT lET AM (1\tlARYLAND) Robert E. Lee and
George B. McClellan fought to a draw here, in the
bloodiest single day in American military history:
the battle ended Lee's first invasion of the North.
invasion of the North: best known for Pickett's
calamitous charge on the third day; Lee suffered
such losses that he could never again moune the
offensive.
In German
mythology, the destruction of all gods and all things
in a final battle \vith the forces of evil.
GOTTERDA.\L\lERCl'v·G
ARtvlY OF THE POTONlAC
The Union's
principal fighting force in the eastern theater and its
greatest army of the war.
Lee's
~ GETTYSBURG (PENNSYLVANIA)
~eatest n:versal, in July 1863, ended his second
PERRYVILLE (KENTUCKY)
A Confederate
invasion force under Braxton Bragg lost this battle
in October 1862: Bragg's columns and ;l second
405
THE
MIGHTY
SCOURGE
OF WAR
rebel invasion force under Kirby Smith fell back
into Tennessee.
.;rCKSBURG (MISSISSIPPI) Rebel garrison on
the Mississippi River; surrendered to Ulysses S.
Grant on July 4, 1863, the same day that Lee
retreated from Gettysburg.
CONFEDER4 TE GENER4LS:
BEAUREG~RD, PIERRE GUST AVE
TOUTANT
Led Confederate forces to victory at
First Bull Run (or First Manassas), July 1861.
BRAGG, BRAXTON
Quarrelsome commander
of the Army of Tennessee, the Confederacy's main
army in the western theater; lost the Battle of
Perryville and the battles around Chattanooga,
October-November
1863.
HOOD,JOHN
BELL Led the Army of
Tennessee to annihilation in the Battle of Nashville,
December 1864.
~ACKSON,
THOMAS J. "STONEWALL"
)efeated three separate Union forces in the
.shenandoah Valley, spring 1862; became Lee's most
brilliant divisional and corps commander; famous
for his flanking march and attack at Chancellorsville,
where he was mortally wounded by his own pickets.
JOHNSTON, ALBERT SIDNEY Many
Confederates considered him the best general in the
rebel army; commanded the western forces early in
the war and was killed in the Battle of Shiloh,
Tennessee, April 1862.
JOHNSTON, JOSEPH EGGLESTON
Preferred
to fight on the defensive; commanded the main
Confederate Army in Virginia in the first half of
1862; fought against McClellan in the Peninsula
campaign; was later sent West to coordinate rebel
efforts to defend Vicksburg against Grant; contested
Sherman's advance against Atlanta in 1864 and in
the Carolinas in 1865.
LEE, ROBERT E. The best rebel commander;
preferred to fight on the offensive; led the Army of
~Torthern Virginia, the Confederacy's showcase
406
army, from June 1862 to April 1865, when he
surrendered to Grant; won the Seven Days Battles
before Richmond, the Second Battle of Bull Run,
Fredericksburg, and Chancellorsville against inferior
Union generals; promoted to general in chief of all
rebel military forces near the end of the war.
PEMBERTON, JOHN
Rebel commander who
surrendered Vicksburg, July 1865.
Uj\/ION CENER4LS:
BURNSIDE, AMBROSE E. Inept commander
of the Army of the Potomac, 1862-1863, who lost
to Lee in the Battle of Fredericksburg, DOecember
1862.
GRANT, ULYSSES S.· The North's best general;
captured forts Henry and Donnelson in Tennessee
in 1862 and the great river garrison of Vicksburg in
1863; won the battles around Chattanooga in
December of that year; became general in chief of
all Union forces in 1864, and led the Army of the
Potomac against Lee in a series of ferocious
engagements around Richmond, finally pinning Lee
down in the siege of Petersburg .
HOOKER, JOSEPH
Inept commander of the
Army of the Potomac who lost to Lee at
Chancellorsville, Virginia, May 1863.
McCLELLAN, GEORGE B. Commander of the
Army of the Potomac, 1861-1862; orchestrated the
glacial-paced Peninsula campaign against
Richmond; was driven back by Lee in the Seven
Days and recalled to Washington; led the Potomac
Army against Lee at Antietam and might have won
the battle had he not been overly cautious; finally
sacked by Lincoln on the ground that the general
had "the slows."
MEADE, GEORGE GORDON
Led the Army
of the Potomac in the Battle of Gettysburg, July
1863, and remained titular head of that army during
Grant's great offensive against Lee, 1864-1865.
POPE, JOHN
Blusterous, incompetent
commander of the Union's Army of Virginia;
28
decisively beaten by Lee and Jackson at Second Bull
--------'1...un
(Second Manassas), August 1863.
SHERMAN, WILLIAM TECUMSEH
Grant's
subordinate conunander in the West, 1862-1863;
became the Union's top general there when Grant
was promoted to supreme conunand; led the Army
of Georgia on its famous march through Georgia
and the Carolinas, 1864-1865.
WHY
THE
CONFEDERACY
LOST
The
April 1865] passed in a dizzying sequence of
weeksJarring
after [Lincoln
was assassinated
in
events.
images dissolved
and reformed in kaleidoscopic patterns that left the senses
traumatized or elated: Lincoln lying in state at the
White House on April 19 as General Grant wept unabashedly at his catafalque; Confederate armies surrendering one after another as [Confederate President] Jefferson Davis fled southward hoping to
re-establish his government in Texas and carry on the
war to victory; Booth killed in a burning barn in Virginia; seven million somber men, women, and children lining the tracks to view Lincoln's funeral train
on its way back home to Springfield; the steamboat
Sultana returning n6rthward on the Mississippi with
liberated Union prisoners of war blowing up on April
27 with a loss of life equal to that of the Titanic a halfcentury later; Jefferson Davis captured in Georgia on
May 10, accused (falsely) of compliciry in Lincoln's
assassination, imprisoned and temporarily shackled at
Fortress Monroe, Virginia, where he remained for
two years until released without trial to live on until
his eighry-first year~and become part of the ex-Confederate literary corps who wrote weighry tomes to
justify their Cause; the Army of the Potomac and
Sherman's Army of Georgia marching 200,000 strong
in a Grand Review down Pennsylvania Avenue on
May 23-2+ in a pageantry of power and catharsis before being demobilized from more than one million
soldiers to fewer than 80,000 a year later and an eventual peacetime total of27,000; weary, ragged Confederate soldiers straggling homeward begging or stealing
food from dispirited civilians who often did not know
where their own next meal was coming from; joyous
black people celebrating the jubilee of a freedom
whose boundaries they did not yet discern; gangs of
southern deserters, guerrillas, and outlaws ravaging a
4
Excc:rptc:d trom B,HC/C Cry
Freedom: The Cil'i/ ~Vur Era by Jamc:s
M. McPhc:rson. Copyright
~ 1988 bv Oxtord Univc:rsitv Press,
Inc. Rc:primed by pc:rmission.
407
THE
MIGHTY
SCOURGE
OF WAR
region that would not know real peace for many years
to come.
The terms of that peace and the dimensions of
black freedom would preoccupy the country for a decade or more. Meanwhile the process of chronicling
the war and reckoning its consequences began immediately and has never ceased. More than 620,000 soldiers lost their lives in four years of conflict360,000 Yankees and at least 260,000 rebels. The
number of southern civilians who died as a direct or
indirect result of the war cannot be known; what can
be said is that the Civil War's cost in American lives
was as great as in all of the nation's other wars combined through Vietnam. Was the liberation of four
million slaves and the preservation of the Union
worth the cost? That question too will probably never
cease to be debated - but in 1865 few black people
and not many northerners doubted the answer.
In time even a good many southerners came to
agree with the sentiments of Woodrow Wilson (a native of Virginia who lived four years of his childhood
~'1 wartime Georgia) expressed in 1880 when he was a
.aw student at the University of Virginia: "Because I
love the South, I rejoice in the failure of the Confederacy .... Conceive of this Union divided into two
separate and independent sovereignties! ... Slavery
was enervating our Southern society .... [Nevertheless] I recognize and pay loving tribute to the virtues of
the leaders of secession ... the righteousness of the
cause which they thought they were promotingand to the immortal courage of the soldiers of the
Confederacy." Wilso n' s words embodied themes that
would help reconcile generations of southerners co defeat: their glorious forebears had fought courageously
for what they believed was right; perhaps they deserved to win; but in the long run it was a good thing
they lost. This Lost Cause mentality took on the proportions of a heroic legend, a southern Cdtcerdiimmenmg with Robert E. Lee as a latter-day Siegfried.*
But a persistent question has nagged historians and
mythologists alike: if Marse Robert was such a genius
.r--:1 his legions so invincible, why did they lose? The
408
answers, though almost as legion as Lee's soldiers,
tend co group themselves into a few main categories.
One popular answer has been phrased, from the
northern perspective, by quoting Napoleon's aphorism that God was on the side of the heaviest battalions. For southerners this explanation usually took
some such form as these words of a Virginian: "They
never whipped us, Sir, unless they were four to one.
If we had had anything like a fair chance, or less disparity of numbers, we should have won our cause and
established our independence." The North had a potential manpower superiority of more than three to
one (counting only white men) and Union armed
forces had an actual superiority of two to one during
most of the war. In economic resources and logistical
capacity the northern advantage was even greater.
Thus, in this explanation, the Confederacy fought
against overwhelming odds; its defeat was inevitable.
But this explanation has not satisfied a good many
analysts. History is replete with examples of peoples
who have won or defended their independence
against greater odds: the Netherlands against the Spain
of Philip II; Switzerland against the Hapsburg Empire; the American rebels ofl776 against mighty Britain; North Vietnam against the United States of1970.
Given the advantages of fighting on the defensive in
its own territory with interior lines in which stalemate
would be victory against a foe who must invade, conquer, occupy, and destroy the capacity to resist, the
odds faced by the South were not formidable. Rather,
as another category of interpretations ha~ it, internal
divisions,fatally weakened the Confederacy: the staterights conflict between certain governors and the
Richmond government; the disaffection of nonslaveholders from a rich man's \var and. poor man's
fight; libertarian opposition co necessary measures
such as conscription and the suspension of habeas cor-
* In medieval Ge:rman mythology, Siegfrie:d slavs the: dragon Fafnir
and wins the hand of Krie:mhild. only to be: killed at the: behe:sr of
Que:e:n Brunnhilde:. whom he had once promised to wed .-
Ed.
,
..,
.
'.
~
....,.
-:..
:-:::~.:.;,.
",..:
~A
"~-#'k/
•..
The outcome
determined
of the Civil
on the battl~field.
vvar. argues James
This photograph
dead after the 1862 battle of Antietam,
pus; the lukewarm
-
commitment
lvlcPherson.
was
shows Cor!federate
invasion
of the :';ortlz and jtJrf§IJ:1Ued ElIrOpeall recognirion of tlze
C)I~(ederacy. (Clzic'~i?o His roric,;zlSociety)
which repelled a rebel
to the Confederacy
pie of Paraguay. That tiny country carried on a war tor
by quondam Whigs and unionists; the disloyalty of
slaves who defected to the enemy whenever they had
six years (1863-71) against an alliance of Brazi1. Ar-
a chance; growing
oumumbered
selves about
doubts among slaveowners
the justice
of their peculiar
and their cause. "So the Confederacy
them-
institution
succumbed
to
gentina,
and Uruguay
Paraguay's
\vhose
combined
population
by neJrly thirty to one. Al-
most every male from twelve to SL'{ty·taught
Paraguayan
army: the country
lost 56 percent
in the
of its
internal rather than external causes," according to numerous historians. The South suffered from a "weak-
total population and 80 percent of its men of military
age in the \var. Indeed, "the Contederate
war drOIT
ness in morale,"
seems feeble:: by comparison."
Confederacy
a "loss of the will to fight."
did not lack "the means to continue
The
the
struggle," but "the will to do so."
To illustrate their argument that the South could
have kept fighting tor years longer if it had tried
harder, tour historians have cited the instructive exam-
tor a mere 5 percent of
the South's white people and 25 percL"nt of the \vhite
males of military age \vert: killed. To be sure, ParaS'11a\"
lost the war. but its "tenJcitv ... does exhibit how J
people CJn tlght \vhen possessed of toul com"inion."
It is not quite' dear
,,·hether
these" .. historian,
409
THE
MIGHTY
SCOURGE
OF WAR
think the South should have emulated
ample. In any case the "internal
will" explanations
implausible,
division" and "lack of
for Confederate
are not
very
Paraguay's ex-
defeat, while not
convincing
problem is that the North experienced
either.
The
similar internal
divisions, and if the war had come out differently
the
competent
West.
the North
man's war/poor
position
alienated
by the rich
man's fight theme; its outspoken
to conscription,
taxation,
suspension
op-
of ha-
beas corpus, and other war measures; its state governors and legislatures
and congressmen
thwart administration
of the southern
grew
disaffected
policies.
population,
with
who tried to
If important
white
a war
elements
as well as black,
to preserve
slavery,
abilities gave
acquired
commanders
At the same time,
M.
Stanton
Montgomery
in [Secretary
of War]
[Quartermaster
businessmen,
managerial
the Union
talent to mobilize
of
to make it
General]
Meigs, aided by the entrepreneurial
ent of northern
superior
and
Sherman
with a concept
total war and the necessary determination
Edwin
had its large minority
remarkable
[Ulysses S. j Grant and [William Tecumseh]
with equal plausibility
North
lost the war in the
him a wide edge over Davis as a war leader, while in
succeed.
The
who
By 1863, Lincoln's
Yankees' lack of unity and will to win could be cited
to explain that outcome.
commanders
tal-
developed
and organize
the North's great~r resources for victory in the modern industrialized conflict that the Civil War became.
This
interpretation
credibility.
ibility -
comes
closer than
Yet it also commits
others
to
the fallacy of revers-
that is, if the outcome
had been reversed
equally significant groups in the North dissented from
a war to abolish slavery. One critical distinction be-
some of the same factors could be cited to explain
tween Union
like (Braxton]
and Confederacy
was the institutional-
Confederate
victory.
If the South had its bumblers
Bragg and Uohn C.] Pemberton
Uohn Bell] Hood
who
lost the West,
ization of obstruction in the Democratic party in the
North, compelling the Republicans to close ranks in
Johnston
support of war policies to overcome
had its [George B.] McClellan
discredit the opposition,
institutionalized
and ultimately to
while the South had no such
political
structure
port and vanquish resistance.
Nevertheless, the existence
to mobilize
sup-
of internal divisions on
and
and Joseph
who fought too little and too late, the North
and [Georgeti5tdon]
Meade who threw away chances in the East and its
Uohn] Pope and [Ambrose E.] Burnside and Uoseph]
Hooker who nearly lost the war in that theater where
the genius of Lee and his lieutenants
nearly won it,
both sides seemed to neutralize this factor as an explanation for Union victory, so a number of historians
despite all the South's disadvantages.
have looked instead at the quality of leadership both
military and civilian. There are several variants of an
nance Chietl Josiah Gorgas and other unsung hel:oes
interpretation
that emphasizes
of superior northern
leadership.
gard, Lee, the two Johnstons
seph Eggleston],
enjoyed
a gradual development
and [Stonewall]
abler military
In [P.G.T.]
Beaure-
[Albert Sidney and JoJackson
commanders
during
the South
the first
its Stanton and Meigs, the Confederacy
1864, as he anticipated
in August, history might re-
cord Davis as the great wir leader and Lincoln as an
also-ran.
Most attempts to explain southern
ern victory
lack the dimension
ter qualified by training and experience
recognition
that at numerous
to lead a nation at war. But Lee's strategic vision was
limited to the Virginia theater, and the Confederate
government
neglected
the West, where Union armies
developed a strategic design and the generals to carry
it out, while southern forces floundered under in-
410
had its [Ord-
who performed miracles of organization and improvisation. If Lincoln had been defeated for re-election in
year or two of the war, while Jefferson Davis was betthan Lincoln
If the Union had
defeat or north-
of contingeney'- the
critical points
during
the war things might have gone altogether differently.
Four major turning points defined the eventual outcome. The first came in the summer of 1862, when
the counter-offensives
of Jackson and Lee in Virginia
and Bragg and Kirby Smith in the West arrested the
28
momentum of a seemingly imminent Union victory.
This assured a prolongation and intensification of the
conflict and created the potential for Confederate success, which appeared imminent before each of the
next three turning points.
The first of these occurred in the fall of 1862, when
battles at Antietam [Maryland] and Perryville [Kentucky] threw back Confederate invasions, forestalled
European mediation and recognition of the Confederacy, perhaps prevented a Democratic victory in the
northern elections of 1862 that might have inhibited
the government's ability to carry on the war, and set
the stage for the Emancipation Proclamation which
enlarged the scope and purpose of the conflict. The
third critical point came in the summer and fall of
1863 when [Union victories at] Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga turned the tide toward ultimate northern victory.
One more reversal of that tide seemed possible in
the summer of 1864 when appalling Union casualties
and apparent lack of progress especially in Virginia
~ brought the North to the brink of peace negotiations
and the election of a Democratic president. But
[Sherman's] capture of Atlanta and [Philip] Sheridan's
destruction ofUubal] Early's [rebel] army in the Shenandoah Valley clinched matters for the North. Only
then did it become possible to speak of the inevitability of Union victory. Only then did the South experience an irretrievable "loss of the will to fight."
Of all the explanations for Confederate defeat, the
loss of will thesis suffers most from its own particular
fallacy of reversibility - that of putting the cart before the horse. Deteat causes demoralization and loss
of will; victory pumps up morale and the will to win.
Nothing illustrates this better than the radical transformation of northern will from deteatism in August 1864
to a "depth of determination ... to fight to the last"
that "astonished" a British journalist a month later.
The southern loss of will was a mirror image of this
northern determination. These changes of mood
~were
caused mainly by events on the battlefield.
.\Jorthern victory and southern defeat in the war can-
WHY
THE
CONFEDERACY
LOST
not be understood apart from the contingency that
hung over every campaign, every battle, every election, every decision during the war ....
Arguments about the causes and consequences of
the Civil War, as well as the reasons for northern victory, will continue as long as there are historians to
wield the pen - which is, perhaps even for this
bloody conflict, mightier than the sword. But certain
large consequences of the war seem clear. Secession
and slavery were killed, never to be revived during
the century and a quarter since Appomattox. These
results signified a broader transformation of American
society and polity punctuated if not alone achieved by
the war. Before 1861 the two words "United States"
were generally rendered as a plural noun: "the United
States are a republic." The war marked a transition of
the United States to a singular noun. The "Union"
also became the nation, and Americans now rarely
speak of their Union except in an historical sense.
Lincoln's wartime speeches betokened this transition.
In his first inaugural address he used the word
"Union" twenty times and the word "nation" not
once. In his first message to Congress, on July 4,
1861, he used "Union" thirty-two times and "nation"
three times. In his letter to [New York Tribune editor]
Horace Greeley of August 22, 1862, on the relationship of slavery to the war, Lincoln spoke of the Union
eight times and of the nation not at all. Little more
than a year later, in his address at Gettysburg, the president did not refer to the "Union" at all but used the
word "nation" five times to invoke a new birth of
freedom and nationalism for the United States. And in
his second inaugural address, looking back over
events of the past four years, Lincoln spoke of
side seeking to dissolve the Union in 1861 and
other accepting the challenge of war to preserve
the
one
the
the
nation.
The old federal republic in which the national government had rarely touched the average citizen except through the post-office gave way to a more centralized polity that taxed the people directly and
created an internal revenue bureau to collect these
411
THE
MIGHTY
SCOURGE
OF WAR
.~~'.
;;i·;~~;:.~r~~p~~;·;;;:~'·~':
.~'
~ 't
A scene during the Battle
summer
4 Gettysbll%
JlIly
1-3.
1863.
TIle
and fall of that year marked the war:, third critic,z! POilU,
"Wrned the tide toward IIltim,lte Iwrrllem victory ..• (Collrtesy
4 the
.--Illri S. K. BratI'll :Hilitary Co IlectioII, Browll l:lIiversity Library)
when ellioll victories at GettysIJlt~,<, Vicksbll(,>? lllld Chatta/looga
taxes, drafted men into the army. expanded
the juris-
diction of federal courts, created a national currency
and a national banking system, and established the first
national agency tor-social \veltare Bureau.
[That bureau provided
the tormer
the Freedmen'5
tood and schools tor
sla\'es, helped them find jobs, and made
menc m 1865, vastly expanded
expense of the states.
those powers
at the
This change in the federal balance paralleled a radical shift of political
power
During the tlrst seventy-two
down to 1H61 a slave holding
tram SOLlth to North.
years of the republic
residenc of one of the
certain they received tair wages.j Eleven of the tlrst
twelve amendments to the Constitution
had limitc:d
statc:s that joined the Confederacy had been President
of the United Sutes tor tortv-nine
of those vears ..
the powers
more than
twenty-three
of the national
government:
--------next seven, bet,rinning with the Thirtc:enth
412
six of the
Amend-
two-thirds
of thl' time. In Congress.
of the thirty-six speakers of the House
28
and twenty-four of the presidents pro tern of the Senate had been southerners. The Supreme Court always
had a southern majority; twenty of the thirty-five justices to 1861 had been appointed from slave states.
After the war a century passed before a resident of an
ex-Confederate state was elected president. For half a
century none of the speakers of the House or presidents pro tem of the Senate came from the South, and
only five' of the twenty-six Supreme Court justices
appointed during that half-century were southerners.
These figures symbolize a sharp and permanent
change in the direction of American development.
Through most of American history the South has
seemed different from the rest of the United States,
with "a separate and unique identity ... which appeared to be out of the mainstream of American experience." But when did the northern stream become
the mainstream? From a broader perspective it may
have been the North that was exceptional and unique
before the Civil War. The South more closely resembled a majority of the societies in the world than did
the rapidly changing North during the antebellum
generation. Despite the abolition of legal slavery or
serfdom throughout much of the western hemisphere
and western Europe, most of the world -like
the
South - had an unfree or quasi-free labor force.
Most societies in the world remained predominantly
rural, agricultural, and labor-intensive; most, including even several European countries, had illiteracy
rates as high or higher than the South's 45 percent;
most like the South remained bound by traditional
values and networks offamily, kinship, hierarchy, and
patriarchy. The North - along with a few countries
of northwestern Europe - hurtled forward eagerly
toward a future of industrial capitalism that many
southerners found distasteful if not frightening; the
South remained proudly and even defiantly rooted in
the past before 1861.
Thus when secessionists protested that they were
acting .to preserve traditional rights and values, they
were correct. They fought to protect their constitutionalliberties against the perceived northern threat to
WHY
THE
CONFEDERACY
LOST
overthrow them. The South's concept of republicanism had not changed in three-quarters of a century;
the North's had. With complete sincerity the South
fought to preserve its version of the republic of the
founding fathers - a government of limited powers
that protected the rights of property a~d whose constituency comprised an independent gentry and yeomanry of the white race undisturbed by large cities,
heartless factories, restless free workers, and class conflict. The accession to power of the Republican party,
with its ideology of competitive, egalitarian, freelabor capitalism, was a signal to the South that the
northern majority had turned irrevocably toward this
frightening, revolutionary future. Indeed, the Black
Republican party appeared to the eyes of many southerners as "essentially a revolutionary party" composed
of "a motley throng of Sans culottes ... Infidels and
freelovers, interspersed by Bloomer women, fugitive
slaves, and amalgamationists." Therefore secession
was a pre-emptive counterrevolution to prevent the
Black Republican revolution from engulfing the
South. "We are not revolutionists," insisted James B.
D. DeBow and Jefferson Davis during the Civil War,
"We are resisting revolution .... Weare conservative. "
Union victory in the war destroyed the southern
vision of America and ensured that the northern vision would become the American vision. Until 1861.
however, it was the North that was out of the mainstream, not the South. Of course the northern states,
along with Britain and a few countries in northwestern Europe, were cutting a new channel in world history that would doubtless have become the mainstream even if the American Civil War had no!
happened. Russia had abolished serfdom in 1861 tc
complete the dissolution of this ancient institution 0'
bound labor in Europe. But for Americans the Civi
War marked the turning point. A Louisiana planteJ
who returned home sadly after the war wrote in 1865
"Society has been completely changed by the war
The [FrenchJ revolution of '89 did not produce ;
greater change in the 'Ancien Regime' than this ha
4L
THE
MIGHTY
SCOURGE
OF WAR
in our social life." And four years later George
Ticknor, a retired Harnrd professor, concluded that
the Civil War had created a "great gulf between what
2. McPherson bases his own explanation of the
Confederacy's defeat on the idea of contingency.
What does he mean by this, and what does he con-
happened before in our century and what has happened since, or what is likely to happen hereafter. It
does not seem to me as if r were living in the country
in which I was born." From the war sprang the great
flood that caused the stream of American history to
sider the critical turning points of the war? When
does he think northern victory became inevitable?
3. How does McPherson defend his conviction that
surge into a new channel and transferred the burden of
exceptionalism from North to South.
QUESTIONS
TO CONSIDER
1. McPherson discusses several traditional interpretations of why the Contederacy lost the Civil War.
What were they, and which does he consider to be
the strongest and the weakest? How does he refute
them all?
414
the most crucial element in all the developments and
consequences of the Civil War, including the political
and the social, was what happened on the battlefield?
Do you agree? why?
4. Discuss McPherson's argument that the Civil
War changed the United States from a union into a
nation. What did this change entail and signify?
5. Explain McPherson's idea that, contrary to our
usual notion, before the Civil War it was the North
and not the South that was exceptional. Do you think
this fits in with Douglas Wilson's discussion of presentism in selection 8?