After the first battle at Bull Run near Manassas, Virginia
Photo: Library of Congress, American Memory Collection.
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"Northern Shovelry and Southern Chivalry" is the contrast that Lincoln biographer Carl Sandburg applied to the expectations of the crowd that had gathered to watch the battle of Bull Run (Sandburg 101 - 103). It was Sunday, July 21, 1861. Since early that morning a crowd had been gathering, but it was crowd of noncombatants. They had come to view the battle, as the date and place of the battle had been announced in advance. Representing the Union side was the 30,000-man strong army of General Irwin McDonald; in opposition werethe 22,000 men of Confederate General Beauregard. The two armies were expected to meet at noon. To the gathering crowd, there was the atmosphere of a gala event. On horseback and in buggies the spectators descended from Washington. Many brought liquid refreshments andbasket lunches. On the arms of a number of senators and congressmen were pretty, parasol-shaded women in crinoline gowns. They had come to watch the first, and what many expected to be the last, great battleof the Civil War. The North's mistake from the onset, according to Edward Pollard, editor of
The Richmond Examiner during the war and Confederate-apologist war historian afterwards,was in thinking that the war would be short. "Going to the war for three months (the term ofthe enlistment of the [Northern] volunteers) was looked upon as a sort of holiday excursion"(Pollard 128).
Despite Pollard's contention that this short-sightedness was the sole possessionof the North, this mode of thinking had an effect on the Southern effort, too. In an addressentered into the record of the D. C. Court Clerk's office in 1865, Confederate Army ColonelRobert Tansill wrote, "It was a capital oversight in the Confederate and State Governments infailing to enlist their troops for the whole period of the war, when it first commenced"(Tansill 10). During the prosecution of the war, manpower would be a great concern for both sides,and both sides would address the problem in similar ways. At first, eager volunteers wouldprovide this manpower. Later, both sides started a draft. For the North, it came in July,1864, and two weeks later Lincoln called for an additional 500,000 volunteers (Sandburg569). For the South, it came in April, 1862, and included all male white citizens between the
ages of 18 to 35. Conscription could be avoided by payment of $500 or by providing asubstitute. Tansill says that the substitution provision was "both impolitic and unjust" as it
"enabled all those who could raise sufficient funds to purchase substitutes to escape the
hardships and dangers of the field, and those who were unable to do so had, of course, to
remain in the army." Also exempted were those who owned fifteen or more slaves. Thecombination of these provisions produced a demoralizing effect on rank and file of theSouthern army, and gave rise to the saying that it was a "rich man's war and a poor man'sfight" (Tansill 16). The North eventually had similar measures. By late in the war, however, the Unionlimited substitution to relatives, veterans, or the very young, and payment of $500 was neededto avoid service. These provisions were less onerous to the Northern foot soldier because thenumbers involved were much smaller. By the later stages of the war, both conscription andsubstitution provided only about six percent of the total Union forces (Shi 500). The quest for manpower would eventually bring both sides to examine their need forblack soldiers. Black regiments, in fact, served with distinction for the Union. WhiteNorthern troops in South Carolina were to hear this unofficial, but effective ditty: This idea also occurred to the South, but the notion of adopting black soldiers in theConfederacy was little more than a late act of desperation. Even if, as Tansill pointed out,blacks had been brought into the war effort early and they helped the South obtain itsindependence, "[It] would have presented the contemptible spectacle to the world of enjoyingfreedom conferred upon them by slaves, and the disasters that such a state of things wouldultimately have brought upon them are too shocking to contemplate" (Tansill 17).
If that thought proved too rank to consider, the South, with a sense of impendingdoom, eventually began to doubt the very morality of slavery. Part of it was psychological. For the South to maintain its belief in the godliness and appropriateness of the peculiarinstitution, it was necessary to believe in the concept of the "faithful servant" which providedthe moral and social basis of slavery. On this foundation rested the plantation system andentire structure of Southern society. This foundation, of course, was shaken to the core whenslaves, particularly trusted household servants, absconded to enemy lines. "The ingratitudeexhibited by slave runaways particularly galled slave owners, who prided themselves on thebenefits slavery offered blacks" (Jimmerson 68).
Was this symptomatic of delusional thinking? In 1864 the Right Reverend William A.Hall presented an encouraging, soothing speech of reaffirmation to President Davis and theCongress in Richmond. His speech was entitled The Historical Significance of the SouthernRevolution, and he began his fifty-three page speech this way: "This Revolution has a grandsignificance, in that it marks the beginning of the last application of the great law by whichall history is governed. The history of our race properly starts from that event known as theFall" (Hall 1). That he started with Adam and Eve to describe how they arrived at that exactmoment in space and time probably did not mean that his speech was very interesting, but itdoes indicate that a great deal of rationalization is required to maintain a positive outlookwhile losing a war.
In the beginning, the North and South both improvised. Neither side was materiallywell-prepared to enter the conflict. About war shortages in the North, Nevins writes, "Theshortage of equipment could be far better understood in Washington than in Indianapolis orBoston, where many imagined that the government had vast storehouses full of everything... The government had no foundry for cannon" (171). Initially, the South was better off insome ways. It had the Richmond armory at the start of the war, which was capable ofproducing a thousand small arms per month. The Fayetteville armory in 1862 started up witha production rate of 5,000 per month, and the South managed to capture about 100,000 piecesin 1862 through 1863. The North had the Springfield armory production and massive ordersboth in the U.S. and abroad by 1862 amounting to over a million weapons, which werealways too slowly fulfilled by companies headed by men like I. E. Dupont, Samuel Colt, andEli Whitney (Nevins 358 - 359). The South was also active in procuring weapons in Europe,but eventually, the pace of the war outstripped all weapon procurement. "Men cried, 'Toarms!' - but there were no arms, no cannon, no uniforms, no medical supplies..." (Nevins114).
If supplies were not enough of a problem to the South, unenlightened financial policiesmotivated more by expediency than sound reasoning had a devastating effect on theConfederacy, undermining commerce in all respects. The South's policy of printing millionsof dollars of script eventually devalued the currency so much that the government itself wasrequiring payment in gold. A. G. Brown in the Confederate Senate in December 1864 said,"... we see by the public newspapers that coin is being bought in our markets at ten, fifteen,and, I am told, as high as twenty dollars in Confederate notes for one dollar in gold orsilver." Brown went on to say that the reason for this was obvious: "The 'blockade runners'buy gold and silver and Yankee money, because with these, and these alone, they can trafficwith the enemy" (Brown 13). Also, by that, and that alone, could the Confederacy trafficwith foreign suppliers.
Did delusions play a large part in the South's defeat? It was delusion at worse andmiscalculation at best that the rest of the world would bow to King Cotton. "...the puerileargument, which even President Davis did not hesitate to adopt, about the power of 'KingCotton,' amounted to this absurdity: that the great and illustrious power of England wouldsubmit to the Confederacy of the South the subserviency of its empire, its political interestsand its pride, to a single article of trade that was grown in America!" (Pollard 130).
Religious organizations in the South did little to moderate the war at home. Thisappeared in the Southern Presbyterian Review in 1861: "We have fought for the glory of theUnion, and the world admired us, but it was not such fighting as we shall do for our wives,our children, and our sacred honor" (Thornwell 31). Despite these sentiments of beatingplowshares into swords, the phrasing used by the Presbyterians is remarkably similar to thatused in a recruiting flyer published anonymously in South Carolina in 1861. One stanza is:
This early enthusiasm for the war is markedly different from the South's mentalcondition in later years. In 1863, a recipe book accommodating the shortages and privationsthat were rampant in the South offered such advice as a "cure for a felon" (ingrown toenail)and "preserving meat without salt." The foreword of the cookbook contained: "Theaccompanying receipts have been compiled and published with a view to present to the publicin a form capable of preservation and easy reference many valuable receipts which haveappeared in the Southern newspapers since the commencement of the war. With these havebeen incorporated receipts and hints derived from other sources, all designed to supply usefuland economical directions and suggestions in cookery, housewifery, &c., and for the camp"(West and Johnston 3).
In retrospect, there are many, many reasons why the South lost, but what of thatSunday in July, 1861, when expectations ran high, a gay crowd waited, and opposing armiesmet and battled along a ten-mile front near Manassas at Bull Run?
The result was inglorious.
President Lincoln heard about it from witnesses that night. "Strewn along roadwaysfor miles were hats, coats, blankets, haversacks, canteens, rifles, broken harnesses, wagonsupside down - the evidence of thousands of soldiers in panic and retreat to Washington"(Sandburg 101).
Sandburg also noted of the Southerners, "As Jefferson Davis came fromRichmond toward the battle lines, he saw many runaways and asked an old man how thebattle had gone. 'Our line was broken,' was the answer. 'All was confusion, the army routed,and the battle lost'" (102).
Anonymous. North Carolina.
A Call to Arms! Raleigh: Thompson and Company, 1861. Online 1999.
Brown, Albert.
"State of the Country. Speech of Hon. A. G. Brown, of Mississippi, In the Confederate Senate, December 24, 1863." Richmond: 1863. Online: 1998.
Hall, William. The Historic Significance of the Southern Revolution: A Lecture Delivered by Invitation in Petersburg, Va., March 14th and April 29th, 1864, and in Richmond, Va., April 7th and April 21st, 1864. Petersburg: A. F. Crutchfield, 1864. Online: 1998.
Jimmerson, Randall. The Private Civil War: Popular Thought During
the Sectional Conflict. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1988.
Nevins, Allan. The War for the Union: The Improvised War 1861 - 1862.
New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1959.
Pollard, Edward. The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates. (Facsimile of 1867 edition) New York: Bonanza Books, 1970.
Sandburg, Carl. Abraham Lincoln: the War Years. New York: Dell
Publishing Company, 1965.
Tindall, George and Shi, David. America: A Narrative History.
New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1997.
Tansill, Robert. "A free and impartial exposition of the causes which led to the failure of the Confederate States to establish their independence. Washington: 1865. Online: 1999.
Thornwell, James. The State of the Country: An Article Republished from The Southern
Presbyterian Review. Columbia: Southern Guardian, Steam-Power Press, 1861.
Online: 1998.
West and Johnston. Confederate Receipt Book. A Compilation of over One Hundred Receipts, Adapted to the Times. Richmond: G. W. Gary, 1863. Online: 1998.
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