After Appomattox: The guerrilla war that never was

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After Appomattox: Theguerrilla war that never wasAnthony James Joes aa Director of the International RelationsProgram , Saint Joseph's University ,PhiladelphiaPublished online: 26 Nov 2007.

To cite this article: Anthony James Joes (1997) After Appomattox: Theguerrilla war that never was, Small Wars & Insurgencies, 8:1, 52-70, DOI:10.1080/09592319708423162

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After Appomattox:The Guerrilla War That Never Was

ANTHONY JAMES JOES

In April 1865, with the surrenders of Generals Robert E. Lee and Joseph E.Johnston, the American Civil War came to an end. But why? That is, whydid the secession struggle not continue after Appomattox in the form of animplacable guerrilla war? With 100,000 Confederates still under arms afterLee surrendered, guerrilla resistance was certainly possible.1 (And at leastone student of the subject believes that the Confederacy should havepursued guerrilla struggle instead of conventional war from the verybeginning of the conflict.2)

Powerful precedents abounded. After the defeat of their armies, thepeople of Spain rose against the Napoleonic invaders.3 In the American Warof Independence, after the 1780 catastrophes at Charleston and Camden,Carolinians under such leaders as Francis Marion the Swamp Fox hadfought with great effect as guerrillas.4 During the Civil War itself,Confederate guerrillas had operated with success in Virginia and Missouri.

President Abraham Lincoln always feared that when the rebel armieshad been beaten southerners would turn to a remorseless guerrilla struggle.General Ulysses S. Grant had no plans to cope with such a scenario: 'I sawclearly ... that Lee must surrender or break and run into the mountains -break in all directions and leave us a dozen guerrilla bands to fight. Toovercome a truly national, popular resistance in a vast territory without theemployment of truly overwhelming force is probably impossible.'5

Why then did Confederate soldiers, after so much sacrifice, not continuethe struggle by petite guerre? The short answer is that commitment to anindependent southern nation could not sustain continued resistance in theface of the overwhelming Federal victories. Surrender was preferable tofurther struggle. But this is not satisfactory. Why did southerners 'prefersurrender to struggle?' In seeking to discover why a guerrilla war did noterupt, we may gain some insights into the causes of at least some guerrillaconflicts that did.

Prominent among the reasons for the Confederate failure to turn toguerrilla war after Appomattox were: (1) widespread misgivings within thesouth itself over secession, (2) the unexpected hardships of the war, (3)resentment of conscription and requisition, (4) Confederate factionalism,

Small Wars and Insurgencies, Vol.8, No.l (Spring 1997), pp.52-70PUBLISHED BY FRANK CASS, LONDON

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THE GUERRILLA WAR THAT NEVER WAS 53

(5) moral disquiet about the institution of slavery, and, not least, (6) thepolicies of the Lincoln government.

Misgivings about Seccession

A fundamental element in the explanation of why peace prevailed afterApril 1865 is found back before the first gun was fired at Fort Sumter, in theprocess of secession itself. The immediate cause for secession was AbrahamLincoln's election as President in the fall of 1860. There had been fourmajor candidates in the campaign: Lincoln of Illinois, candidate of the newRepublican party, committed to prevent the expansion of slave territory;Stephen Douglas, also of Illinois, the hope of pro-Union Democrats; VicePresident John Breckinridge of Kentucky, candidate of the southern wing ofthe Democratic party which would later support secession (although duringthe campaign Breckinridge did not advocate secession); and John Bell ofTennessee, former Speaker of the House and an old-line Whig. SinceLincoln, Douglas, and Bell were avowed Unionists, one can interpret votesfor them as votes unfriendly to secession, at least in the short term. Douglasand Bell did well in the south: in Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee andVirginia a majority of the vote went to Bell and/or Douglas; in NorthCarolina they obtained almost half the votes. Clearly, as late as November1860 southern Unionist sentiment was considerable.

After the election, a majority of the slaveholding states electedconventions to decide on secession. Generally, the turnout in these stateelections was lower than in the presidential contest, and the method ofselection of delegates favored the big slaveholders. Impetus came to thesecessionist cause from the widespread belief that the process would bepeaceful: outgoing President James Buchanan held that secession wasunlawful but so was Federal coercion.6 And if, enflamed by passion, theLincoln Republicans attempted to coerce the South, their effort would endin no time in complete military humiliation. There would, in a word, be littleif any fighting.

These comfortable beliefs notwithstanding, secession was slow andoften faced serious resistance, especially by non-slaveholders.7 SouthCarolina declared .its secession on 20 December 1860; several other deep-south states followed shortly; Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was chosenProvisional President of the Confederate government in early February1861; Fort Sumter came under attack on 12 April, and three days laterPresident Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers. Yet North Carolina did notcomplete secession until 21 May, Virginia until 23 May, and Tennessee until8 June. Zebulon Vance, governor of North Carolina during the war, resistedsecession right up until Lincoln's call for volunteers to coerce the south. In

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54 SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES

Virginia, the convention voted to go out by only 88 to 53, and this was afterfighting had begun. Robert E. Lee resigned from the Federal army becauseVirginia seceded, not because he was a southern nationalist.8 He believedthat 'the act of Virginia in withdrawing herself from the United Statescarried me along as a citizen of Virginia . . . . " A pro-Union counter-movement in Virginia's western counties eventually produced the new Stateof West Virginia.10 The eastern counties of Tennessee would almostcertainly have imitated the western counties of Virginia and withdrawn fromtheir state in order to stay in the Union - had Federal troops been withinstriking distance. Tennessee's Andrew Johnson refused to recognise hisstate's secession and retained his Senate seat until Lincoln appointed himMilitary Governor of Tennessee in March 1862." Fully 30,000 Tennesseanseventually volunteered for service in the Union armies, a larger numberthan Lee would surrender at Appomattox.n • .

The Shattered Hope for an Easy War

Even after the war had begun profound disquiet over the question ofsecession continued within the Confederacy. Many had supported secessionbecause they believed that the Federal government would be unable toresist, and that if resistance occurred it would end in a brilliant southernvictory." 'It is doubtful that any people ever went to war with greaterenthusiasm than did Confederates in 1861.>14

Many Confederates were eager to have some sort of battle before thewar came to its speedy and predetermined end. So they fired on Fort Sumterin Charleston Harbor even though the commander there had said he wouldsurrender in two days. Charleston ladies watched the attack as if it were afireworks display. Then, the first big battle of the war, at Bull Run (July1861), was an easy Confederate victory, proving to southerners that theywere brave, that northerners were poltroons, and that the war was going tobe short and glorious.15 In addition, everyone said that British and Frenchintervention on the Confederate side was a certainty, because Europedesperately needed the southern cotton crop. Cotton was King! Thisoverestimation of Europe's need for southern cotton was one of the greatestdelusions of the entire war.

But soon enough events began to disperse Confederate delusions. FortSumter had fallen easily, but the attack exasperated northern opinion, whileBull Run gave Unionists a much more realistic vision of the work ahead.Then in February 1862, Nashville became the first Confederate state capitalto be occupied by Union forces. New Orleans, the south's largest city andchief port, fell the following April, Baton Rouge - another state capital - inMay, and Memphis in June. Morale visibly deteriorated.16 One historian sees

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the reverses of early 1862 as a crisis worse than that following the disastersof the summer of 1863, when the Confederacy sent its best army to invadePennsylvania, only to suffer a major repulse at Gettysburg." Many in thesouth realised that Gettysburg and Vicksburg had doomed their cause.Those twin disasters produced 'an epidemic of desertion'.18 A few weeksafter Gettysburg Lee wrote to President Davis that unless desertions couldbe reduced or made up 'I fear success in the field will be seriouslyendangered."9 Peace movements grew bolder.20

True enough, Union desertion rates were high as well. When on the eveof Gettysburg Major General George G. Meade arrived to take command ofthe Army of the Potomac, he expected to find 160,000 men. He foundinstead only 75,000; the other 85,000 were absent without leave.21 YetUnion and Confederate desertion rates are not truly comparable, for it wasnot the northern states that were being invaded, nor their soldiers who mightface severe punishment in the aftermath of defeat.

And the Union blockade grew ever tighter.22 The American maritimetradition was in the east, not the south. The 3,000 miles of Confederatecoastline had few important ports, and fewer with interstate railconnections.23 Those major ports which the Union armies could not occupythe Union navy shut down. In 1861 the south had shipped 3.5 million cottonbales to Europe, down to 168,000 a year later.24 Daring blockade-runnersbrought in luxury goods instead of medicines, weapons and foodstuffs. Tobreak this suffocating blockade the Confederates developed their ironcladwarships, beginning with the famous Virginia (originally Merrimac). Theeffort failed resoundingly. The blockade produced serious inflation. ByDecember 1864, in Charleston one dollar in gold cost $42 Confederate.25

The unexpected war also produced the unexpected problem of refugees:their movement from state to state increased the pressure on dwindlingsupplies of food and housing. In the spring of 1863 a bread riot broke out inRichmond itself, only partially calmed by an address by President Davis.26

Conscription and Requisitions

At first the Confederacy relied on volunteers for the army, but 'theunexpected length-and magnitude of the struggle' soon rendered that sourceinadequate.27 So the Confederates enacted a draft law, in April 1862, a yearbefore the Union did. Its main effect was to drive up voluntary enlistments;during the war conscription per se produced little new manpower for thearmies. But the Confederacy paid an especially high price for itsconscription laws. The southern draft exempted large social categories,including state and national officials and members of numerous skilledvocations. Men flocked to join these exempt vocations, often bribing

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officials to obtain enrollment.28 Because a man could be drafted only in hisdomicile state, many began simply roaming the south.29

Notably, persons owning 20 or more slaves also received exemptionfrom the draft. Predictably, this provision produced deep class bitterness.30

Many soldiers 'openly complain that they are torn from their homes, andtheir families consigned to starvation, solely in order that they may protectthe property of slaveholders [who stay home] in quiet enjoyment ofluxuriant ease.'31 When members of the planter class did serve in the armies,they often refused to accept discipline from officers of higher military rankbut lower social status.32

Declaring that conscription undermined that very philosophy of states'rights which legitimised the war, Vice President Alexander Stephens andother powerful officials openly opposed the draft laws. Angry conflictsrepeatedly broke out between the central government and state officials,especially in North Carolina.33 'Conscription was the most unpopular act ofthe Confederate government. Yeoman fanners who could not buy their wayout of the army voted with their feet and escaped to the woods or swamps.Enrollment officers met bitter resistance in the upcountry and in otherregions of lukewarm or nonexistent commitment to the Confederacy.'34

Eventually the Richmond government began taking property as well asmen. As the needs of the fighting forces continued and increased, theConfederacy felt compelled to resort to requisitions among the civilpopulation. Often these requisitions involved injustice and even brutality. InAugust 1862 the Richmond Enquirer wrote: '"We often hear persons say,'The Yankees cannot do to us any more harm than our own soldiers havedone."'35 Indeed, the Confederacy 'was becoming, in large areas, a policestate',36 and 'the universal hatred of impressment [requisitions] becamecomingled with the widespread hostility to President Davis'.37

The hated requisitions, the draft, the absence of the men from so manyrural families, the ever-tighter Union naval blockade, the inexorableapproach of Federal armies, all resulted in serious deprivation for ordinarypeople, and especially for the poor.38 The sufferings of soldiers' familiesincreased desertion; General Joseph Johnston stated that he did not blame hismen for deserting, when letters from home were telling the soldiers that theirfamilies were destitute due to the depredations of the Confederaterequisitions.39 Many believed that the rich were not bearing their fair burdenof the war.40 Predictably, the fall 1863 elections saw the replacement ofseveral fire-eating secessionist congressmen by former Whigs andconciliationists.41 No doubt southerners could have more easily borne theirsufferings if they could truly believe that they would not be in vain. ButLincoln's reelection in November 1864 obliterated any chance of anegotiated peace, while hopes for military victory had long since withered.42

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Confederate Contentiousness

Clearly a protracted secessionist war would require a sustaining ideology -and just as clearly the defense of slavery would not fill that requirement. No,southerners must sacrifice for the Confederacy because it was their truenation. But how to turn what had always previously been a geographicalexpression into a nation?

President Davis lauded the Confederacy as the last true resting place oforiginal American liberty and independence.43 But such views actuallyworked against the emergence of a southern nationalism. If there was a trulysecessionist ideology it was the doctrine of States' Rights, but that doctrineitself undermined Confederate nationalism. Davis drew severe criticism foreven using the expression 'southern nation'.44 Nor was this a concept to stirthe blood of ordinary yeomen soldiers. There was Union nationalism,mainly but by no means exclusively in the northern states, and there wasState patriotism, especially in the south, but there was no effectiveConfederate nationalism. The Confederacy was but a constitutionalarrangement, without the legitimacy of age, without the catalyst of a foreignfoe, and without a unified population behind it.

The emergence of Confederate nationalism faced many obstacles:Unionist sentiment in wide areas, increasing physical hardship, festeringclass resentments, the spreading conviction after 1863 that the war was lost,the concept of 'state sovereignty' itself. And there was this also: supportersof the Confederacy knew that under Lincoln's amnesty proclamations (seebelow), they could return - almost at will — to their membership in what hadbeen until recently their true national community.

From the beginning, the absence of a pervasive Confederate nationalismgenerated bitter conflicts between the central government and the states,which grew more intense as the war grew more desperate. The Confederacywas fighting for survival itself against a more powerful foe; the logic of thesituation called for a concentration of power in the centre, and in the centrea concentration in the executive. This did not happen. The 'Confederacytried to operate on the basis of eleven separate conflicts instead of mergingits resources into one great centrally-directed war.'45

President Lincoln suffered from both abolitionists and copperheads, buthis domestic political troubles were not comparable to the disintegratingdivisions in the Confederacy. President Davis, although leading arevolution, was no Cromwell, no Robespierre, but in truth a conservative.He did not know how to rally the southern people, and he 'did not knowhow to deal with the politicians'.46 Consequently, 'his path became stonywith needless quarrels' (that is why he had six successive secretaries ofwar).47 Southern politicians were particularists incapable of submerging

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their provincial agendas in the cause of common survival. The ConfederateCongress was 'far inferior in brains and character to its counterpart inWashington, and far less effective in supporting the Executive'.48 Conflictsamong these leaders grew more heated as the war grew more desperate:conflicts between President Davis and Vice President Stephens, betweenDavis and Congress, between Davis and his generals, between Davis andstate governors, between governors and generals, and on and on. Davisincreasingly became the object of real vituperation by his enemies inCongress and in the press. Throughout the entire war Lincoln vetoed exactlythree bills; Davis vetoed 38 - and the Confederate Congress overrode all hisvetoes but one. 'One who delves deeply into the literature of the period mayeasily conclude that Southerners hated each other more than they did theYankees.'49 These hatreds 'sapped the South's vitality and hastenedNorthern victory'.50

If, between the Democratic Convention of 1864 and the fall of Atlanta,Davis had declared a ceasefire to allow peace talks with Lincoln - or someprominent northern politician - it is debatable whether, the guns havingonce been quieted, northern opinion could have again been rallied. ButDavis lacked the political insight and sensitivity for such a manoeuvre.Clearly, it is no accident that the supreme embodiment of the Union causehas always been the politician Abraham Lincoln, while the supremeembodiment of the Confederacy has always been the soldier Robert E. Lee.Yet it is not at all clear that any of those who wished to displace Daviswould have done a better or even a comparable job, a consideration withmany implications.51 The disparity between the quality of political talentavailable to the Union in contrast to the Confederacy was surely a majorfactor in the war's outcome.

The Albatross of Slavery

If one cause stands out above all others for both southern secession andsouthern defeat, it is slavery. 'Nobody', writes Samuel Eliot Morison, 'whohas read the letters, state papers, newspapers, and other surviving literatureof the generation before 1861 can honestly deny that the one main,fundamental reason for secession in the original states which formed theSouthern Confederacy was to protect, expand and perpetuate the slavery ofthe Negro race.'52 As Lincoln said in his Second Inaugural: 'Slaveryconstituted the peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interestwas, somehow, the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate and extendthis interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union,even by war.'53 Or, as R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, Confederate Secretary ofState, exclaimed: 'What did we secede for if not to save our slaves?'54

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Many have believed that secession occurred because the Republicanvictory in 1860 threatened the safety of slavery.55 But secessionist threatshad resounded in the south for more than two decades before the foundingof the Republican Party. The 1860 Republican platform pledged to respectslavery in those states where it existed; Lincoln had made clear his view thatthe constitution did not allow Congress to interfere with slavery in a state;and anyway even after the 1860 elections the Republicans were a minorityin both houses of the Congress and on the Supreme Court. Advocates ofsecession were alarmed not because of anything the Republican platformsaid or Lincoln did, but because they foresaw the gradual weakening ofslavery, first in the border states and then ultimately in the deep south.56

Such a prospect was intolerable. During the 1850s secessionists haddeveloped the argument that slavery was not a necessary evil but a positivegood, requiring not merely protection but actual propagation. Thisincreasingly aggressive attitude led to demands to reopen the slave trade(prohibited by the Constitution), the spectacle of Bleeding Kansas, the DredScott fiasco, and the deliberate shattering of the Democratic Party. For manyadvanced proponents of slavery, the southern states must free themselvesfrom the increasingly democratic and industrial Federal Union, and becomethe nucleus of a great tropical slave empire to embrace Mexico and theCaribbean. Thus the pro-slavery 'fire-eaters' plunged their country and theirsection into disunion and war even before Lincoln had been inaugurated.

Thus slavery had created the Confederacy. Could slavery now sustain it,since only perhaps about six per cent of whites in the seceded states wereslaveowners?

The instigators of secession had from the first counted on foreignintervention to make good their aspirations to independence. Of course,effective British recognition would have involved a dangerousconfrontation with the formidable and growing Union navy. But more thanAmerican power, it was slavery that restrained the British government.William Gladstone at first portrayed the embattled southerners as anoppressed people valiantly struggling for liberty. But the EmancipationProclamation, issued in September 1862, made it impossible to sustain sucha view. As Lincoln had foreseen, the Proclamation fused the cause of theUnion with the cause of liberty. The victory of the Confederacy meant thevictory of slavery. Nearly all of reformist opinion in Britain rallied againstintervention. John Bright declared that 'the Confederates were the worstfoes of freedom that the world has ever seen'.57 John Stuart Mill believedthat the breakup of the Union 'would be a victory of the powers of evilwhich would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spiritsof its friends all over the civilised world'.58 The first Confederatecommissioners sent to Britain wrote home that 'the sincerity and

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universality of this feeling embarrass the Government in dealing with thequestion of our recognition.'59

And slavery was overshadowing the home front as well. When hedefiantly proclaimed that 'this stone [slavery] which was rejected by thefirst builders, is become the chief stone of the corner of our new edifice',Vice President Stephens said more than he perhaps realised, for the "firstbuilders" had indeed rejected the stone of slavery.60 In the springtime of therepublic, most Americans, slaveholders included, viewed slavery as either agreat evil or a great misfortune. The founding fathers, the men of theConstitutional Convention at Philadelphia, prominent among whom weremany southerners, hoped that it was on the way to extinction. Hence theynever used the words slave or slavery in the constitution so that they wouldnot be found there - artifacts of a benighted era - after slavery had becomeextinct (the Constitutional circumlocution for slaves was 'all otherpersons.') And southerners had acquiesced in the constitutional prohibitionof the slave trade. Even before the Constitution, the Northwest Ordinance of1787 had closed the vast territory between the Ohio River and the GreatLakes to slavery. Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia depicted slaveryas degrading to slave and master alike.61 James Madison hoped that bydestroying the slave trade the Americans 'might save themselves fromreproaches and our posterity from the imbecility ever attendant on a countryfilled with slaves' .62 George Washington attributed the alleged inferiority ofblacks not to their genes but to their chains.63 He freed his own slaves,saying 'I can clearly foresee that nothing but the rooting out of slavery canperpetuate the existence of our union, by consolidating it in a common bondof principle.'64

In 1856 Robert E. Lee had written: "There are few, I believe, in thisenlightened age, who will not acknowledge that slavery as an institution isa moral and political evil ... a greater evil to the white than to the colouredrace.'65 And to General Winfield S. Scott at the outbreak of the Civil War,Lee declared that if he owned every slave in the south he would gladly freethem to ensure peace.66 Every educated Confederate knew that the entireChristian world condemned slavery.67 Even the Constitution of the veryConfederacy itself prohibited the international slave trade. And manysoutherners would interpret the defeat of the Confederacy as God'sjudgment on the sin of slavery.68

Southern independence required the destruction of the Union thatWashington, Madison and Jefferson — all southerners — had so laboured tobuild, and also the deaths of scores of thousands of fine young men fromevery state of that Union. But why must southerners follow this bloodypath? Apologists of secession said that they were fighting for liberty. But itwas not the liberty their fathers had fought for, the liberty to govern

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themselves as free men. It was not the liberty the Vendeans had fought for,liberty to worship God. It was not the liberty the Spaniards had fought for,liberty from a cruel foreign overlord. Confederate liberty meant the libertyof a small minority within the south to hold millions of men, women andchildren in perpetual slavery. Thus, in the very centre of the Confederateenterprise lurked this great paradox, fundamental, inescapable, corrosive.

An Army of Slaves

The stubborn genius of Robert E. Lee, the occupation of ever-widerstretches of the vast Confederacy by Union armies, and the depredations ofConfederate guerrillas all contributed to a critical demand for more Federalmanpower. Thus Lincoln approved the creation of military units composedof former slaves, to free experienced white soldiers for combat. Lincolnmoved cautiously in this matter, an especially sensitive one in slaveholdingbut still loyal states like Kentucky (although black troops were deployedagainst guerrillas in Missouri as early as October 1862).69 Confederateauthorities threatened to execute any white officer captured in command ofblack troops 'for inciting servile insurrection'. In response, PresidentLincoln announced that for every Union officer illegally executed by theConfederacy, he would hang one Confederate officer.70 In the event, about180,000 blacks served with the Union forces, approximately one out ofevery ten Federal troops.

There were free blacks in the pre-Civil War south, but their livingconditions were often so bad that they petitioned the courts to be allowed tobecome slaves under a master of their own choosing.71 Nevertheless,companies of free negro soldiers (not slaves) had been organised as early as1861 in New Orleans.72 Apparently their services were not accepted.73 Butthe unexpectedly long war caused Confederates to tamper with thatinstitution for whose inviolability they had plunged a nation into carnage.Mississippi freed any slave who defended white women or helped hismaster wounded in battle.74 And the Confederate government had from thefirst hired slaves from their masters to erect fortifications (the Confederacyconscripted the services of free white men, but not unfree black men, 40 percent of the southern labour force).

As the doom of the south approached ever closer, desperate demandsarose: the Confederacy must cast everything into the fire to keep the engineof war going — everything including slavery itself. Thus the governor ofLouisiana advised that the Confederacy put all negro males into the armyand emancipate them after victory.75 Lee had apparently been in favour ofarming slaves since Gettysburg, and Davis since late 1864,

Incredulous outrage greeted such proposals. The very hint of arming and

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freeing slaves rocked the morale of the south: if the Confederacy was goingto arm its slaves, then what was the war all about? Senator R.M.T. Hunterof Virginia pointed out with unsettling logic that 'if we are right in passingthis measure [to arm slaves and promise them freedom] we were wrong indenying to the old [Federal] government the right to interfere with theinstitution of slavery and to emancipate slaves.'76 Or more succinctly, in thewords of Major General Howell Cobb: 'if slaves make good soldiers, thenour whole theory of slavery is wrong.'11 How true. In January 1865, thelegislature of South Carolina vigorously condemned any arming of slaves.

Yet in that same month Lee observed that slavery would surely beextinguished either by the Union or by the Confederacy; the only questionwas who would get the benefit of arming the blacks. Lee wanted blacktroops.78 'My own opinion is that we should employ them without delay. Ibelieve that with proper regulations they can be made efficient soldiers.'79

He urged emancipation for any slave who joined the army, and freedom forhis family if the black soldier did his duty.80 If the Confederacy did not armthe slaves, everything would be lost; if it did arm them, something,including the personal freedom of the leaders of rebellion, might bepreserved.81 And while Confederate statesmen debated, Confederatefortunes crumbled. Then in March 1865 (two minutes to midnight onHistory's clock), the Confederate Congress authorised the creation of slavemilitary formations, up to 300,000 men!82 In 1861, the secessionists hadbegun the war in order to continue slavery; by 1865, they would end slaveryin order to continue the war. Surely, war is revolution.

The Politics of Victory

A strategy of attrition seeks to defeat the enemy by inflicting unacceptablynumerous casualties on them, while a strategy of exhaustion seeks to defeatthe enemy by depriving them of the means to continue the struggle. Aspectsof the Union strategy of exhaustion include the occupation of ever-largerareas of the Confederacy by Federal troops, the emancipation of slaves inrebellious areas, the induction of former slaves into the Union armies, andthe blockade of southern ports. An additional instance is General William T.Sherman's deliberately destructive march through Georgia and SouthCarolina, one which suggests the concept of political exhaustion: attackingConfederate morale by demonstrating that the Confederacy could no longerprotect anybody anywhere. Lincoln also employed political exhaustionagainst the rebels, with great effect (see below).

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Sherman's War

However famous or infamous Sherman's march through Georgia may be,his campaign in South Carolina was even more devastating. Houseburningwas much more common there; many Union officers and soldiers wrotehome that they found it supremely fitting to visit destruction upon the statethat had been the first to secede and the first to fire on the American flag. InFebruary 1865 the handsome state capital, Columbia, suffered severelyfrom major fires. Sherman always denied that these fires resulted from hisorders, and there is little evidence to contradict him.83

Sherman's path of desolation through the southern heartlandundoubtedly caused some desertions from Lee's army in Virginia by menanxious to go home and safeguard their families. Confederate soldiers fromregions occupied by Union troops had indeed been leaving the army to carefor their families long before Sherman ever saw Georgia.84 And for thecivilian population the campaign made clear how utterly unable theirgovernment was to protect them: 'Sherman's march to Savannah had shownthe Confederate defenses to be an eggshell.'85 But the destruction ofsouthern agricultural capacity, a principal rationalization of the march,actually seems to have had little effect on Lee; his army lacked notfoodstuffs but the means of transporting them. At Appomattox Lee'ssoldiers were hungry, and Grant fed them, but all this had little to do withSherman.86

Apologists for the controversial campaign, including Sherman, argue(like Julius Caesar in his Gallic Wars) that his policy of destruction - a formof the strategy of exhaustion - saved lives and suffering by shortening thewar. Sherman's march thus foreshadowed Allied strategic bombing ofGerman and Japanese cities in World War II. But while Sherman'sdestructiveness caused southerners to despair, it also engendered in them aprofound bitterness against northerners in general, a bitterness that delayedreconciliation for decades and distorted the political and social developmentof several southern states for a century.

With Malice toward None

Sherman's strategy of exhaustion was the foil for Lincoln's policy ofclemency toward individual Confederates and the rapid readmission ofseceded states into the Union. Well before the end of 1864 the rebels faceda clear choice: continue to suffer in a losing war, or find shelter in aforgiving peace.

As the conflict entered its fourth year, the Union arsenal included atightening blockade; notable improvements in leadership and armament;

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and the transfer of manpower from the Confederate to the Union sidethrough the Emancipation Proclamation and the creation of black militaryunits. To this impressive armoury President Lincoln added powerfulpolitical weapons. First, his Emancipation Proclamation destroyed anychance of European intervention. Second, with his plans for a moderatepeace, he fanned the already blazing divisions among the foe. In December1863 Lincoln issued his Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction, 'adevice to shorten the war and solidify white support for emancipation' ,87

Any Confederate (with certain exceptions) who agreed to take an oath ofrenewed allegiance to the United States and pledge to accept the end ofslavery would receive full restoration of rights. When in any formerlyseceded state such oathtakers equaled ten per cent of the vote cast in theelection of 1860, they could reorganise their state government. Even beforeAppomattox such governments existed in Tennessee, Arkansas andLouisiana.88 And with obvious symbolism Lincoln chose as his runningmate in 1864 Andrew Johnson of Tennessee.

Lincoln's leniency found its reflection in the policies of Sherman andGrant. Grant's generosity to Lee's army undoubtedly helped prevent anoutbreak of serious guerrilla fighting. A week and a half after Leesurrendered at Appomattox, Sherman granted relaxed terms to JosephJohnston's army in North Carolina, mainly because he did not want thatarmy to scatter and turn to guerrilla war.89 And Union military authorities'granted truly generous terms, in view of their bloody record', to Missouripartisans.90

But if, in spite of the suffocating blockade, the inexorable advance of theUnion armies, the complete collapse of all hope of foreign intervention, thecrushing fatigue produced by years of sacrifice, the grotesque inadequacy ofslavery as a rallying symbol, the utter absence of any sustaining ideology,and the undeniable prospect of a charitable peace - if in spite of all this,large numbers of Confederates had in spring 1865 seriously contemplatedturning to guerrilla resistance, they would have had to confront thefollowing considerations.

First, how could Confederate guerrillas hope to be successful on theirown, in light of the fact that guerrilla efforts had not been decisive whenthey had enjoyed the support of large field armies?

Second, the successful guerrilla movements during the AmericanRevolution and in Napoleonic Spain had received substantial foreignassistance. But who in 1865 would succour Confederate guerrillas? IfEurope had declined to recognise the Confederacy in its full flower, wouldit now risk the wrath of a triumphant Union to aid the guerrilla remnant ofa thoroughly defeated cause - even assuming that substantial amounts ofhelp could somehow get through the Union blockade?

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And third, a bloody guerrilla resistance in defiance of all of the aboveobstacles would require a credible enemy, one who could provide aninescapable conviction of his foreignness, his repellant and irredeemableotherness. The great guerrilla wars of history have burst forth againstforeign invaders who were wantonly murderous (China, Yugoslavia),racially alien (Viet Nam, Tibet), or religiously obnoxious (The Vendee,Spain). But the struggle between Pennsylvanians and Virginians was notremotely comparable to that between Frenchmen and Spaniards (not tospeak of Germans and Serbs). On the contrary, Pennsylvanians andVirginians shared ethnicity, language, religion, historical experience,patriotic symbols and political convictions. Sherman and Major GeneralPhilip H. Sheridan did not incite systematic sacrilege and wholesaleexecutions like their Napoleonic counterparts in Spain; even the sociopathWilliam Quantrill never descended to the mass rapes and murders of womenand children that befouled the Vendee.91

Thus southern resistance lacked a satisfactory foe. Southern patriotism,such as it was, was rooted in the fact of slavery. Slavery had created theConfederacy, but slavery could not sustain it. Even in 1861, 'Long liveslavery!' would have been a public relations disaster. It was clear in 1864that slavery was doomed; why continue the fight? And if, nevertheless, after1865 the white south had given itself over to guerrilla war, Union forces inthe south would almost certainly have consisted more and more of blacksoldiers, so that southern blacks would become not only emancipatedlegally but also dominant militarily.

And if General Lee should surrender, what fate awaited the soldiers ofthe south? Wholesale confiscations, massive deportations, endlessexecutions, Vendean drownings, the Gulag Archipelago, the Katyn Forest?No. They would reenter into civil relations with the administration ofAbraham Lincoln, the legitimate government put into office by a freeelection in which Confederates themselves had participated hardly 52months previously. And they could participate in similar elections if theywould accept amnesty and help to bind up the nation's wounds. Why thenshould southerners have defied all the odds and plunged themselves andtheir land into the flames of partisan war, a war whose outcome was onlytoo grimly predictable? The Spanish guerrilla uprising was not unfamiliar tohigh-ranking Confederate leaders.92 Both Spain and Missouri made clear tothem the abyss into which a society could fall that becomes the locus of amajor guerrilla war. The Confederacy turned out to be no Spain. Its leaders- with the notable exception of President Davis himself - urged southernersto take the path of peace. In his last wartime message to Davis, Lee wrote:'As far as I know the condition of affairs, the country east of the Mississippiis morally and physically unable to maintain the contest unaided with any

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hope of ultimate success. A partisan war may be continued, and hostilitiesprotracted, causing individual suffering and the devastation of the country,but I see no prospect by that means of achieving a separate independence

An Exhausted Confederacy

Long before Appomattox, many Confederates had concluded that theircause was too costly. The battle-weary veterans of the Confederacy had firstbeen told that secession would be peaceful. When it turned out not to bepeaceful, they were then told that the war would be short and victorious. Butin fact the proportion of casualties to total population was higher in theConfederacy than in Britain or France during World War I. The whole ideaof peaceful or easy secession was exposed as foolishness, and slavery itselfwas clearly doomed.

Nevertheless, after the war former Confederate Senator Benjamin Hill ofGeorgia wrote: 'AH physical advantages are insufficient to account for ourfailure; the truth is we failed because too many of our people were notdetermined to win.'94 There is much merit in this view. Material factors arenot necessarily the determining ones in war, as Sun Tzu, Napoleon and MaoTse-tung have taught us. That guerrilla war did not engulf the south afterAppomattox suggests that the Confederate defeat was a moral as well as amaterial one.

Consider that during the American Revolution, partisans in the southerncolonies had fought their best after the British had shattered the regularAmerican army in that region and there was little prospect of immediateassistance. And in the Civil War, in spite of colossal disasters likeFredericksburg and Chancellorsville, sufficient numbers in the north heldfirmly to their dedication to the Union. In the ranks of Secession it was quitedifferent: early Confederate victories evaporated under a waxing Unionistsun; enthusiasm for an independent southern commonwealth based onslavery evaporated with them. For at least two years before Appomattox,and especially after the summer of 1863, southerners experienced a growingconviction that their losses of blood and property would all be in vain.95

Desertions increased dramatically after Lincoln's reelection.96 Even in thatembodiment of effective resistance, Lee's Army of Northern Virginia,desertion had become serious during 1864 and reached alarmingproportions by March 1865. The undeniable defeat of the Confederacydiscouraged further fighting. If battlehardened Confederates lacked thephysical and spiritual stamina to carry on the conventional war beyond thespring of 1865, what possible reserves could they have summoned up tounleash a massive guerrilla struggle?97 Reeling from military defeat as

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unexpected as it was unmitigated, possessing neither a sustaining ideologynor a suitably alien foe nor any prospect of foreign assistance nor eveninternal unity, and confronting Lincoln's promise of malice toward none andcharity for all - how could this South possibly have fought on? A handfulof Confederates, unable to accept surrender, joined the army of the EmperorMaximilian in Mexico (another lost cause). Emblematically, John Mosby,the most famous southern guerrilla leader, advocated reconciliation with thevictorious Union and embraced the Republican Party of General Grant.98

A Reflection

At least 600,000 American soldiers died in the War of Secession, more thanin the two World Wars and Korea combined. The billions spent by theLincoln government could have purchased the freedom of every singleslave; near the end, the Confederates themselves were prepared to sacrificeslavery to feed the engine of war. And on the same day that the Americanflag was once again raised over Fort Sumter, the war also took the life ofAbraham Lincoln.

Under the standard 10-to-l formula for counterinsurgency, it would haverequired a protracted occupation of the southern states by 500,000 Unionsoldiers to extirpate a guerrilla movement of 50,000 ex-Confederates. Thiswould have meant multiplying by 11 the horrors of Missouri border warfare.How national reunification would ever have come about after such ascenario is not easy to imagine. But, in the spring of 1865, the weary anddisillusioned soldiers of the Confederacy realised that the choice they facedwas not between war or annihilation, but between war or reconciliation.And so the fighting ceased.

NOTES

This article is an adaptation and revision of material from my Guerrilla Conflict before the ColdWar and Guerrilla Warfare: A Historical, Biographical and Bibliographical Sourcebook.

1. Herman Hattaway and Archer Jones, How the North Won: A Military History of the Civil War(Urbana: U. of Illinois 1983; p.701.

2. Robert L. Kerby, 'Why the Confederacy Lost', Review of Politics 35 (July 1973).3. On the Spanish guerrillas, see Don W. Alexander, Rod of Iron: French Counterinsurgency

Policy in Aragon during the Peninsular War (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources 1985);John L. Tone, The Fatal Knot: The Guerrilla War in Navarre and the Defeat of Napoleon inSpain ((Chapel Hill, NC: UNC 1994); J. W. Fortescue, History of the British Army, Vols. 8and 9 ((London: Macmillan 1920), and Charles Oman, A History of the Peninsular War(Oxford: OUP 1902-30).

4. On southern guerrillas in the American Revolution, see John Richard Alden, The South inthe Revolution 1763-1789 ((Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. 1957); John S. Pancake, ThisDestructive War: The British Campaign in the Carolinas 1780-1782 (University: U. of

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Alabama 1985); Russell F. Weigley, The Partisan War: The South Carolina Campaign of1780-1782 (Columbia: U. of S. Carolina 1970); Edward McCrady, The History' of SouthCarolina in the Revolution 7780-1783 (NY: Paladin 1969 [orig. 1902]); Ronald Hoffmann etal. (eds.) An Uncivil War: The Southern Backcountry During the American Revolution(Charlottesville: U. of Virginia 1985); Hugh F. Rankin, Francis Marion: The Swamp Fox(NY: Crowell 1973); Robert D. Bass, The Swamp Fox (NY: Henry Holt 1959); Robert D.Bass, Gamecock: The Life and Times of General Thomas Sumter ((NY: Holt, Rinehart,Winston 1961); Anne King Gregorie, Thomas Sumter (Columbia, SC: R. L. Bryan 1931); A.N. McCrady, The Fighting Elder: Andrew Pickens (Columbia, SC: U. of S. Carolina 1962).

5. Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones and William N. Still Jr, Why the SouthLost the Civil War (Athens: U. of Georgia Press 1986) p.436.

6. Paul D. Escott, After Secession: Jefferson Davis and the Failure of Confederate Nationalism(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. 1978) p.26 and passim.

7. Ibid. Ch.2.8. Clifford Dowdey, Lee (Boston: Little, Brown 1965) pp.121, 126.9. Ibid, p.679; see also Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, Vol. I, The Improvised War,

1861-1862 (NY: Scribner's 1959) pp.110-11.10. For the origins of the State of West Virginia see ibid. pp. 139-44.11. Ibid. p. 106.12. Thomas William Humes, The Loyal Mountaineers of Tennessee (Spartanburg, SC: Reprint,

1974 [orig. 1888]), p. 9; and see also Richard Nelson Current, Lincoln's Loyalists: UnionSoldiers from the Confederacy (NY: OUP 1992).

13. Escott, After Secession (note 6) p.171.14. Bell Irvin Wiley, The Road to Appomattox (NY: Atheneum 1883 [orig. 1956]) p.43.15. Ibid. pp.47ff.16. Ibid. Ch.2.17. Ibid.18. Ibid. p.65.19. Allan Nevins, The War for the Union, Vol.4: The Organized War to Victory, 1864-1865 (NY:

Scribner's 1971) p.248.20. Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (NY: The Free Press 1954) p.13.21. Bruce Catton, The Army of the Potomac: Vol.2, Glory Road (Garden City, NY: Doubleday

1952) pp.102, 255.22. Much of the information for this section on the blockade has come from Bern Anderson, By

Sea and River: The Naval History of the Civil War (Westport, CT: Greenwood 1977).23. Ibid. p.15.24. Allan Nevins, War for the Union, Vol.3, The Organized War, 1862-1863 (NY: Scribner's

1971) pp.338-9.25. Ibid, p.384.26. Ibid.27. Albert Burton Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (NY: Hillary House

1963 [orig. 1924]) p.11. (My italics).28. Ibid. Ch.4 and esp. pp.56-7.29. Escott, After Secession (note 6); Wiley, Road to Appomattox (note 14) Ch.2.30. James M. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (NY: OUP 1988) pp.611-12.31. Nevins (note 24) p. 13.32. Bell Irvin Wiley, The Life of Johnny Reb: The Common Soldier of the Confederacy fBaton

Rouge: Louisiana State U. 1970 [orig. 1943]) pp.337-9, 344.33. Moore, Conscription and Conflict in the Confederacy (note 27) pp.279ff.34. McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom (note 30) p.432.35. Escort (note 6) p.111; see similar events in Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb (note 32) pp.43-7;

Nevins (note 19) pp.235-41.36. Ibid, p.239.37. Ibid, p.237.38. Escott (note 6) Ch.4.39. Samuel Eliot Morison, The Oxford History of the American People (NY: OUP 1965) p.698.

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40. Escott (note 6) Ch.4.41. Wiley, Road to Appomattox (note 14) Ch.2.42. Ibid. p.70.43. Escott (note 6) Ch.6.44. Ibid, p.179.45. Wiley (note 14) p.82. 'Confederate ideology was defeated in large measure by the internal

contradictions that wartime circumstances brought so prominently to the fore.' Drew GilpinFaust, The Creation of Confederate Nationalism: Ideology and Identity in the Civil WarSouth (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. 1988) p.84.

46. Clement Eaton, Jefferson Davis (NY: The Free Press 1977) p.272.47. Nevins (note 24) p.37.48. Ibid.p.45.49. Wiley (note 14) p.78.50. Ibid.51. Nevins (note 24) pp.38-9.52. Morison, Oxford History of the American People (note 39) p.608.53. Roy P. Basler (ed.) The Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers

U. 1953) Vol.8, p.332.54. Allan Nevins, The Statesmanship of the Civil War (NY: Macmillan 1953) p.51. And see

Faust, Creation of Confederate Nationalism (note 45) Ch.4.55. Eaton, Southern Confederacy (note 20) p.30.56. See an extended discussion of this point in Don Fehrenbacher, The Dred Scott Case (NY:

OUP 1978) pp.541ff.57. McPherson (note 30) p.549.58. Ibid, p.550. And see Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams (NY: Modern Library

1946) Chs.8-14.59. McPherson (note 30) p.311.60. Nevins, Statesmanship of the Civil War (note 54) p.53.61. Dumas Malone, Jefferson and his Time, Vol.VI, The Sage of Monticello (Boston: Little

Brown 1981).62. Irving Brant, James Madison: Father of the Constitution, 1787-1800 (Indianapolis: Bobbs

Merrill 1950) p.250.63. Thomas Flexner, George Washington, Vol.4, Anguish and Farewell 1793-1799 (Boston:

Little, Brown 1972) pp.114-15.64. Ibid, p.485.65. Al. L. Long, Memoirs of Robert E. Lee (Secaucus, NJ: Blue and Grey Press 1983) p.83.66. Bruce Catton, The Coming Fury, Vol.1 of The Centennial History of the Civil War (NY:

Doubleday 1961) p.335.67. Wiley (note 14) Ch.3.68. Ibid.69. Joseph T. Glatthaar, Forged in Battle: The Civil War Alliance of Black Soldiers and White

Officers (NY: Meridian 1991) p.122.70. Ibid, p.201. On blacks in the Union Army, see Dudley Taylor Cornish, The Sable Arm (NY:

Longmans, Green 1956), and Nevins, War for the Union (note 19) Vol.2, Ch.20.71. Charles H. Wesley, The Collapse of the Confederacy (NY: Russell and Russell 1937) Ch.5.72. Ibid. p. 140.73. Wiley, Life of Johnny Reb (note 32) p.329.74. Wesley, Collapse of the Confederacy (note 71) p.137.75. Ibid. p. 154.76. Bruce Catton, Never Call Retreat, Vol.3 of The Centenniel History of the Civil War (NY:

Doubleday 1965) pp.426-7.77. Wesley (note 71) p. 160, my italics.78. Ibid, p.16179. Catton, Never Call Retreat (note 76) p.428.80. Wesley (note 71) p. 162.81. Escott (note 6) Ch.8.

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7 0 SMALL WARS AND INSURGENCIES

82. Ibid, p.252.83. Nevins (note 19) pp.260-1; also John G. Barrett, Sherman's March Through the Carolinas

(Chapel Hill: UNC 1956) esp. Chs.6 and 17.84. Hattaway and Jones, How the North Won (note 1) p.492. Numbers of these deserters joined

the Union armies; Ella Lonn, Desertion During the Civil War (Gloucester, MA: Peter Smith1966 [orig. 1928]) p.4.

85. Dowdey, Lee (note 8) p.519.86. See Barren, Sherman's March Through the Carolinas (note 83) pp.280-1.87. Eric Foner, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution (NY: Harper & Row 1989)

p.36.88. 'His aim was to weaken the confederacy by establishing state governments that could attract

the broadest possible support, and for that purpose he defined as a unionist virtually everywhite Southerner who took an oath pledging to uphold the Union and the abolition ofslavery.' Foner, Reconstruction (note 87) p.62. See the text of the Proclamation in Basler,Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln (note 53) Vol.7, pp.53-6.

89. Hattaway and Jones, How the North Won (note 1) p.676.90. Richard S. Brownlee, Gray Ghosts of the Confederacy: Guerrilla Warfare in the West,

1861-1865 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State U. 1958) p.240; for more on the Missouri andborder wars see Jay Monaghan, Civil War on the Western Border (Boston: Little Brown1955); Albert Castel, William Clarke Quantrill (NY: Frederick Fell 1962); Carl W: Breihan,Quantrill and his Civil War Guerrillas (NY: Promontory 1974); William Elsey Connelley,Quantrill and the Border Wars (NY: Pageant 1956 [orig. 1909]); and above all, the excellentand disquieting study by Michael Fellman, Inside War: The Guerrilla Conflict in MissouriDuring the American Civil War (NY: OUP 1989).

91. Sadly, slave women did not escape the harshness of guerrilla war as lightly as white womendid; Barrett (note 83) p.85 and passim. For analysis and bibliography of the Vendean conflict,see Anthony James Joes, Guerrilla Conflict before the Cold War (Westport, CT: Praeger1996) Ch.2, 'Genocide in La Vendee'.

92. Beringer, Hattaway and Jones, Why the South Lost the Civil War (note 5) p.343.93. Dowdey, Lee (note 8) p.592, my emphasis. And see the remarks by Lee to Gen. Alexander

just before the surrender, in Gary W. Gallagher (ed.) Fighting for the Confederacy: ThePersonal Reflections of General Edward Porter Alexander (Chapel Hill: UNC 1989)pp.531-3.

94. Morison (note 39) p.698.95. Nevins (note 19) pp.224ff.96. Berringer, Hattaway and Jones (note 5) p.438.97. Ibid, p.342; Brownlee, Gray Ghosts (note 90) p.369.98. On Mosby, see John S. Mosby, Memoirs of Colonel John S. Mosby (NY: Kraus Reprintl969);

J. D. Wert, Mosby's Rangers (NY: Simon and Schuster 1990); Virgil Carrington Jones, GreyGhosts and Rebel Raiders (NY: Henry Holt 1956); and Kevin H. Siepel, Rebel: The Life andTimes of John Singleton Mosby (NY: St. Martin's 1983).

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Documents

After Appomattox: The guerrilla war that never was