SCRIPT - Union Strategy During the American Civil War, 1861-1865 (18/05/2017)

Union Strategy During the American Civil War

This video is about the strategies the Union adopted during the American Civil War of 1861-1865, how they evolved, and how they ultimately brought about victory over the Confederate States.

 

The Union began with significant material advantages. It had 22m people, while the Confederates had 9m with 3m of them slaves. It had 20k miles of rail to the South’s 9k, and was responsible for over 90% of the antebellum US’ industrial output. In war, it would produce 30 guns for every 1 the South made, and would mobilize 2m soldiers to the South’s 1m.

Under Abraham Lincoln, the North’s war aims were clear – preserve the Union. But how could this be achieved, and how to do it at least cost?

Initially, proposals such as the Crittenden Compromise tried to solve the issue peacefully. Lincoln, however, rejected compromising on the sticking point of slavery, not just because of moral and intra-party factors but also because he feared setting a precedent for what he saw as Southern extortion of the Federal Government.

More forceful strategies soon took over. General-in-Chief Winfield Scott proposed doing what was done during the Nullification Crisis, which was to hold the remaining coastal forts, demonstrate Federal authority by collecting import duties, and dare the Confederates to fire the first shot. On April 1861, the South did just that against Fort Sumter.

Despite the outbreak of hostilities, Lincoln, Scott and many Northerners assumed that most Southerners were still pro-Union, and given the right circumstances they would overthrow the secessionists. The North should therefore stand firm, but restrain itself: major military action would only generate anti-Union sentiment or worse, an insurgency.

Such thinking informed Scott’s ‘Anaconda Plan’ of May 1861. First, the Union would strengthen its blockade against Southern ports. Then a force of 60-80k would move down the Mississippi and secure New Orleans. Thus encircled, the Confederates would realize their situation and stand down, given enough time.

But time was what Lincoln didn’t have. Already the papers were calling for a swift ‘March to Richmond’ to end the conflict, and there were concerns that patience would be interpreted as Union weakness, raising Southern confidence as well as the possibility of foreign intervention. But swift action turned out not to be the solution either, as the Union Army advanced and was defeated at 1^st Bull Run.

November 1861 saw George B McClellan become General-in-Chief, tasked with forming a strategy for winning what was now clearly a war. McClellan shared the rosy view on Southern pro-Union sentiment, but he also brought a unique dimension to Union strategy. Firstly, faulty intelligence made him consistently believe that Confederate forces in Virginia outnumbered him significantly. Secondly, McClellan saw that the South occupied the strategic ‘interior lines’, and therefore could theoretically concentrate more troops faster than the Union could. Lastly, McClellan had also observed the Crimean War of 1853-1856, and noted there that attacking entrenched positions head-on was a very risky endeavor.

To neutralize these perceived Confederate advantages, McClellan wanted to disperse Southern strength, maneuver its armies out of position, and win decisively before they could re-concentrate. A quick victory would also end secession without addressing slavery, avoiding permanent Southern hostility and a potential race war.

McClellan’s strategy to achieve this was to attack simultaneously at multiple points. In the East, an army 270k strong would pin the Confederates in Virginia. In the West, a 20k-man force would secure the Mississippi and take Tennessee, threatening the Deep South and also outflanking the Confederate position in Virginia. Movements in Missouri, Arkansas and Texas would tie down local forces, while the Navy would capture ports and allow Union raiders to disrupt the South’s railroads. The Confederacy thus overstretched, McClellan’s Eastern army would then march down the Atlantic Seaboard, defeat the South’s scattered armies and win the war.

Parts of McClellan’s strategy were successfully executed. In the West, Ulysses S Grant took Forts Henry and Donelson, opening the Mississippi for the Union and forcing the Confederates out of Kentucky. By February 1862, Union forces were at Nashville. They repelled the Southern counteroffensive at Shiloh, then decided to follow the Confederate Army to Corinth instead of advancing on Chattanooga. The Navy took New Orleans in April and made an attempt on Vicksburg in May.

But the critical part of the plan, McClellan’s Army of the Potomac, failed. Unwilling to risk a head-on battle against the Confederates with ‘only’ 150k men, McClellan first delayed, then in March attempted a flanking movement at Richmond via the Virginia Peninsula. He took too long, and by September the Confederates, under Robert E Lee, had ejected the Union from most of Virginia. Lee then invaded the North and while he was stopped at Antietam, this and the Confederate invasion of Kentucky underscored the South’s continued willingness to fight.

By this time, Lincoln had accepted that assumptions of Southern pro-Union feeling were wrong, and that the war effort needed to be escalated. Grant had already been living off occupied territory since mid-1862, and now William Tecumseh Sherman suggested that deliberate exhaustion of Confederate territory was key to breaking the South’s will to fight and achieving victory.

The Confiscation Acts, coupled up with updates to the laws of war in 1863, allowed Union soldiers to seize, use and finally destroy Confederate property, while the Emancipation Proclamation gave the Union moral legitimacy, deterred foreign intervention, and most of all, encouraged Southern slaves to join the North.

Henry Halleck replaced McClellan as General-in-Chief in July 1862, and in October proposed a plan to fragment the South. Grant, aided by troops from New Orleans, was to capture Vicksburg: the fall of this last stronghold on the Mississippi would not only sever Texas, Louisiana and Arkansas from the eastern Confederacy, but would also re-open the river for trade and appease Lincoln’s Midwest voters. At the same time, Union forces were to take Chattanooga and Knoxville, cutting what was then the Confederacy’s only cross-country railroad as well as opening the doorway to the Deep South. In the East, McClellan was replaced with Ambrose Burnside as head of the Army of the Potomac in November. Halleck wanted Burnside to advance towards Richmond, capture its rail network, and above all cover Washington and prevent Lee from moving North.

Halleck’s strategy was initially only implemented by Grant, who from May to July 1863 sieged and captured Vicksburg. No movement was made against Chattanooga for the first half of the year. In the East, Burnside advanced in December 62 but was quickly defeated at Fredericksburg, while his successor Joseph Hooker met the same fate in May 63 at Chancellorsville. George Meade managed to stop Lee’s second Northern invasion at Gettysburg in July, but then failed to destroy the Confederates in retreat.

Furthermore, whatever strategic momentum gained after Vicksburg and Gettysburg was overridden by the declaration of the Second Mexican Empire in July. Fears that the French-backed regime might try to retake Texas for Mexico saw the Union halt its advance and redirect attention to the Trans-Mississippi.

The Confederacy used the breathing space to reorganize. In September, Union forces captured Knoxville and Chattanooga but were defeated at Chickamauga soon after, thanks to a Confederate Corps transferred there from Virginia. Grant, in turn, defeated the Confederates two months later, keeping the doorway to the Deep South open.

Despite all of its victories, the Union had only slightly moved the front lines in the crucial theaters of Tennessee and Virginia, and was still as far from victory as it had been in 1862, with the 1864 Presidential election less than a year away.

Grant became General-in-Chief in February 1864, resolving to give Lincoln successes to ensure his reelection, if not end the war by November. Before his appointment, he had proposed massing troops in North Carolina in order to outmaneuver Lee from Virginia, but this was rejected as Lincoln did not want to give Lee the chance to move North.

Grant’s initial strategy therefore followed his predecessors’ plans and attacked on multiple fronts. One force would descend on Mobile, while Sherman would advance into Georgia. In the East, Grant saw the destruction of Lee’s army as the key to victory: Meade would advance and pin Lee down, while an amphibious landing south of Richmond, supported by flanking movements down the Shenandoah, would capture that city, cut the railroad between northern and southern Virginia, and surround the Confederate force.

Grant’s plan, again, only partially worked. Sherman pushed into Georgia in May, but Confederate defensive tactics under Joseph Johnston delayed his progress. The Union force earmarked for Mobile was defeated in Louisiana and never launched the operation. In Virginia, Union forces were defeated at the Shenandoah and the amphibious landing was plugged up by the Confederates, allowing Lee to confront Meade head-on.

In response, Grant abandoned his attempts to outmaneuver the Confederates strategically and began to simply grind them down. Starting in May, he fought Lee continuously from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania Court House to Cold Harbor: within 6 weeks, he had dealt 33k casualties and driven Lee’s army into Richmond, at the cost of 60k of his own. Grant knew that unlike Confederate casualties, Union casualties could be replaced.

Still, the strategy was politically risky: stuck in a long siege with growing casualties and few decisive victories, Grant had to hope for success elsewhere before Election Day. The Union proved lucky in this, as the South abandoned Johnston’s defensive strategy in July and decided to fight Sherman head-on. They lost, Atlanta fell to the Union in September, and Lincoln was reelected in November.

By this time, the Union strategy of exhaustion was in full swing: Philip Sheridan burnt the Shenandoah starting September, while Sherman launched his ‘March to the Sea’ in November, intending to fully demonstrate the Confederacy’s impotence against the Union. Capturing Savannah in December, Sherman burnt Columbia in February 1865, and by March was brushing aside demoralized Confederate resistance in North Carolina.

Failing to break the siege before Grant was reinforced, Petersburg and Richmond surrendered in April, with Lee’s army following soon after at Appomattox. After four years of bloody war and more than 300k casualties, the Union had finally achieved victory.

Was Confederate defeat inevitable? Material superiority made Union victory more likely with each passing year, but its strategy was initially riddled with incorrect assumptions and incomplete execution. Grant’s attrition strategy assumed great political risk and had the Confederates managed to cumulatively delay the Union in the West by a couple of months, Lincoln may well have lost reelection. Ultimately, the Union managed to create and execute a strategy that played to its strengths and Confederate weaknesses, which is why it achieved the final victory.

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