Wayne,
There is no way I can improve on Balt's analysis or his writing style about Fort Sumpter.
With regard to the legality of secession, the Confederates might have chosen a legal action to claim the right. The Chief Justice was Roger Taney and I think it is likely they would have won and been home free. Had they lost they still could have seceeded.
Rather than a legal solution the Confederacy chose a political solution. Ultimately they were unable to prevail.
John
Bingo, BaltACD! You could throw 9/11 into that group as well.
Firelock76 Well John, at the beginning a lot of people up North were more than willing to "let the errant sisters go in peace." The average Yankee though secession was a shame, but wasn't willing to go to war to force the seceded states back in the Union. Some Abolitionists were furious the slave states were out of their "power", fo lack of a better term, but more Abolitionists felt "good riddance!" The firing on Fort Sumter changed all that, of course. What was an act of questionable constitutionality, and remember a lot of people, North or South, couldn't decide if secession was legal or not, became an act of flat-out rebellion, an insult to the rest of the United States and an act of agression that could not stand. Without that attack Lincoln couldn't have taken the country to war no matter what his opinion of secession, the rest of the country wouldn't have supported him. Remember, no mandate. Firing on Fort Sumter was the dumbest thing the Confederates could have done. Wayne PS: Anyone else want to weigh in on this? I'd hate to see this thread turn into the "John WR and Firelock 76 Show." Or maybe it's gone as far as it should.
Well John, at the beginning a lot of people up North were more than willing to "let the errant sisters go in peace." The average Yankee though secession was a shame, but wasn't willing to go to war to force the seceded states back in the Union. Some Abolitionists were furious the slave states were out of their "power", fo lack of a better term, but more Abolitionists felt "good riddance!"
The firing on Fort Sumter changed all that, of course. What was an act of questionable constitutionality, and remember a lot of people, North or South, couldn't decide if secession was legal or not, became an act of flat-out rebellion, an insult to the rest of the United States and an act of agression that could not stand. Without that attack Lincoln couldn't have taken the country to war no matter what his opinion of secession, the rest of the country wouldn't have supported him. Remember, no mandate.
Firing on Fort Sumter was the dumbest thing the Confederates could have done.
Wayne
PS: Anyone else want to weigh in on this? I'd hate to see this thread turn into the "John WR and Firelock 76 Show." Or maybe it's gone as far as it should.
Fort Sumter & Pearl Harbor - tactical victories for the agressors, the ultimate in strategic mistakes.
Never too old to have a happy childhood!
Firelock76:
"PS: Anyone else want to weigh in on this? I'd hate to see this thread turn into the "John WR and Firelock 76 Show." Or maybe it's gone as far as it should. "
Go ahead. I'm enjoying the discussion.
_____________
"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Firelock76And yes, once Seward realized Lincoln was a LOT more intelligent than he let on, he got along just fine with him.
I agree, Wayne.
But I think that is a tribute to Seward also. Despite being Republican and an abolitionist Seward worked well with southern Democrats, especially with Jefferson Davis who led them. At the War's beginning he really wanted to come to terms with the Confederates and have a mutual agreement that would have allowed them their own country. He really had to change his whole position because of Abe and he did so quite gracefully.
Today no one takes seriously Horace Greely's argument that we should say to the Confederates "Errant sisters, go in peace." But in those days a lot of people did. Lincoln, of course, would have none of it.
Glad you liked the story John! I suppose Lincoln was refering to his generals, he hadn't found a war-winner yet.
And yes, once Seward realized Lincoln was a LOT more intelligent than he let on, he got along just fine with him. Edwin Stanton, the Secretary of War, didn't think much of Lincoln either at the beginning but turned into one of his biggest fans.
Hiding his light under a bushel was a favorite Lincoln tactic. A great way to get his opponents to underestimate him.
The topic of the adequacy of Confederate railroads has been discussed. However, I think Christopher Gabel (who has been mentioned for Railroad Generalship in the Civil War) sheds more light on it with a second article, Rails to Oblivion. http://www.cgsc.edu/carl/download/csipubs/gabel6.pdf
Gabel argues that at the beginning of the war the Confederate rail system was quite good for its time, was used by the Confederacy and worked well. However, as time went on it became increasingly worn down. By 1864 little was left of it. The Confederates simply ran their railroads into the ground and ignored repairing them or maintaining them. That was the real problem.
Firelock76ell, Lincoln loved the rifle, the Marines present loved the rifle, some Navy officers tried it and they loved the rifle as well. So, Spencer got his contract.
Thanks for the story. I've certainly heard of the Spencer repeating rifle but I never hear about how Abe learned about it. I know that he very actively searched for better weapons so it all makes sense.
With regard to his remark about "the kind of help I'VE got," do you think he was referring to Seward? It is no surprise to learn that Seward was a snob but once they got to know each other Lincoln and Seward seem to have worked well together. However, Lincoln was pretty unhappy with some of his generals.
As I understand it, the concern about nominating him was that he was an abolitionist. Abolitionism was really a social movement rather than a political movement and many Republicans regarded abolitionists as rolling cannons, people who could do a lot of harm with intemperate rhetoric and could not do any good at all. As Lincoln pointed out, while slavery was a moral wrong it was also a legal right under the US Constitution and the legality of slavery had to be respected. And it was respected up until very late into the war when the 13th Amendment was passed.
That's a great story John, and definately NOT more than I wanted to know.
Seward did have one other problem which kept him from being totally accepted by the Western Republicans. He WAS a bit of an Eastern snob who had a habit of rubbing people the wrong way.
Here's one of my favorite Lincoln storys: In 1862 a young man named Christopher Spencer had invented a repeating rifle (I'm sure you've heard of it) and was going around Washington trying to get someone interested. The rifle was a good one, a VERY good one, but ol' Chris couldn't get an audience with anyone. Somewhat understandable, there were a lot of people shopping war winning ideas around, some good, some harebrained, so it was hard to separate the wheat from the chaff.
In desparation Spencer sent a note to Lincoln at the White House telling him about his rifle. To his surprise he got an answer back from Lincoln saying he was very interested in seeing it demonstrated, come to the White House on such-and-such a date and at a certain time.
True to his word Lincoln was waiting for Spencer on the appointed date, and they rode in Lincolns carriage to the Marine Barracks rifle range. Well, here's a very nervous 25 year old Chris Spencer sitting in a carriage with the most powerful man in the country. He tried making small talk: "Mr. President, it must be very diffcult running the country with a war on."
Lincoln looked him in the eye and said, "It sure is with the kind of help I'VE got!"
Well, Lincoln loved the rifle, the Marines present loved the rifle, some Navy officers tried it and they loved the rifle as well. So, Spencer got his contract. Ironically the Naval Services got a great gun before the Army did!
About a year ago The New York Times published a story about Samuel Ballton, a slave who was a railroad worker, escaped, continued to work on the railroad for the Union and the rest of his life. Here is a link: http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/10/been-workin-on-the-railroad/
Firelock76Pretty ironic huh? Especially the way things turned out in the end.
I agree with everything you say but there is more.
I believe that more than a little of Abe Lincoln's motivation was jealousy of Stephen A. Douglas. Douglas began in Illinois politics about the same time Abe did and my the middle 1850's had become the best known Senator in the country. Abe just couldn't accept the fact that Douglas with only a little better education and who came to the state as a stranger had gone so far while he had not. Of course Douglas was a Democrat in a Democratic state. Lincoln, on his part, was a Whig but the Whigs were the upper crust and they never really accepted Abe with his country twang and rural manners. Abe never fit in and they let him know it. But they did tolerate Abe because he could do one thing. He could win elections in the center of the state where Whigs almost always lost an Democrats won. So he could be one of them as long as he did not expect social acceptance. I think this bothered him to. But he never spoke of these things because to do so would be to reinforce those factors.
In 1856 Abe got the Republican nomination for Senator. James Shields was Illinois' junior Senator and a close ally of Stephen Douglas. Abe wanted very much to be Senator and campaigned hard for it. However, after many ballots he had to let Lyman Trumbull, a Free Soiler, win or see another Douglas Democrat win so he went with Trumbull. It was a bitter defeat for him.
They guy who gave Trumbull his vote was Ned Judd, a Free Soiler who was actually pledged to Abe but who backed out and went for his fellow Free Soiler Trumbull. But Abe maintained his relationship with Ned Judd. There is a story--I don't know how true it is--but the story is that one night Lincoln and Judd were sitting in a box car waiting for the train to Springfield when Judd asked Abe if he ever thought of being President. Abe laughed. "A sucker like me?" he said. Judd pressed him and he said he thought there were people much better suited to the office and the first person was William Seward. Judd pointed out Seward was an abolitionist and that was a real barrier with eastern Republicans. The conversation ends there. Judd later became the leader of the Illinois Republican Party and as party leader he went to Washington when the convention was being planned. He made a strong pitch that the convention should be held in Chicago because it was a neutral city and would have no candidate running for President. And the national leaders brought the idea so the convention was set for Chicago. Judd came back to see that a place was built and worked for Lincoln along with David Davis, also a leading Republican. They sabotaged Seward's efforts, manipulated the convention and made all sorts of political promises to get Abe nominated. Meanwhile Abe was back home in Springfield. He didn't know at that time of all of the political trading that had been done. He was at the telegraph office waiting for news and when he came he went home and said, "Mary, we're running for President."
Perhaps this is more than you ever wanted to know. John
Oh sure John, in the beginning Lincoln agonized as to what to do because he didn't have a clear mandate from the American electorate. refer to my earlier post about the election of 1860. Fort Sumter and it's aftermath gave him a "mandate", as it were, so he could act with a pretty good assurance of the support of the people.
Interesting to compare resume's between Lincoln and Davis: Lincoln's formal education basically stopped at the third grade level, he was self-educated after that. He did have some experience in local politics in Illinois, was a lawyer on retainer for a Mid-Western railroad, and did have that one term in Congress, losing his seat over his opposition to the war with Mexico. By 1860 he was making a VERY good living as a lawyer, but aside from his Republican Party activism hadn't made much of an impact on anything.
Then there's Jeff Davis. West Point graduate, and remember West Point was one of the best schools, if not THE best school in the country, sucessful businessman, Mexican War combat veteran and commander of the Mississippi Regiment of Rifles, Secretary of War, then senator from Mississippi. If you were going to pick someone to be president based on a resume', who would YOU pick?
Pretty ironic huh? Especially the way things turned out in the end.
Seward really should have gotten the nomination. But 10 years earlier he had made a speech where he spoke of the Constitution allowing slavery and went on to say "But there is a higher law...." meaning the Bible. Substitute the Bible for the Constitution? There was a real uproar. And in 1860 Seward's words came back to haunt him. The Republicans wanted someone without that baggage which would help them win the free-soil vote. Lincoln impressed eastern Republicans when, in February 1860, he spoke at Cooper Union. And ultimately he won the nomination.
When Lincoln was elected Seward was not the only one with a low opinion of Lincoln's abilities. Everyone in government shared that view. After all, Abe's only prior experience in national government was one 2 year term in the House and he botched that. In is farewell address to his Springfield neighbors he said he did not know what he was going to do and he asked them to pray for him and in his First Inaugural Address he practically begged the Confederates to return to the Union. Jefferson Davis had been in the Senate for years and had been the Secretary of War under Franklin Pierce must have been pretty contemptuous of him. And at the beginning Lincoln just agonized and dithered and did nothing. Finally, Davis, knowing that it would take at least 3 months for Lincoln to get Congress to Washington so he could declare war and would have to do nothing in the meantime, gave General Gustav P. T. Beauregard permission to fire on Fort Sumpter. The next day Abe declared a national emergency and called up 75,000 troops. He never looked back. Nor did Seward.
John, I had heard about Sewards negotiations with Confederate Commisioners about the "nuts-and-bolts" of a permanent separation and how to make it as painless as possible. Seward also wrote a memo to Lincoln where he proposed a set up where he would function as a "prime minister" of sorts and Lincoln would be a "figurehead" chief of state. Apparantly Seward didn't think much of Lincolns abilities. Lincoln responded quietly but firmly there was only going to be one president and head of state and it was going to be himself. A lesser, more high-strung man would have fired Seward but ol' Abe wasn't that type. In the end, Seward turned into one of Lincolns strongest supporters.
Another Seward idea after Fort Sumter was to provoke a war with a "third party" (Britain? France?) to try and re-unite the country against a common enemy. Lincoln quietly shot that one down too. "One war at a time Willie. OK?"
Firelock76 A straight Lincoln-Douglas match-up would have seen Douglas in the White House. How things would have turned out then is anyones guess.
A straight Lincoln-Douglas match-up would have seen Douglas in the White House. How things would have turned out then is anyones guess.
And an interesting guess it would be. Stephen Douglas strongly supported Union, so much so he held Abe Lincoln's hat on inauguration day. But he wasn't called "The Great Compromiser" for nothing. Throughout his political life he had been able to resolve issues between northern and southern Democrats. If he remained true to form and had become President he would have tried to resolve this one too.
Are you aware that in early 1861 including after the inauguration William Seward was secretly communicating with Confederate Commissioners for an armistice? Several weeks into the term he wrote Lincoln a long memo where he stated there was no policy on dealing with the Confederates and proposed to cede Sumpter to them while holding on to Fort Pickins in Florida. Lincoln sent it back with a note written on it to the effect that there was a policy which was to "Hold, occupy and possess" Federal property such as Customs Houses and Forts. At that point Seward realized there would be no armistice and stopped communicating with the Commissioners.
Oh yeah John, I've seen it myself. Tiger on the job, pussycat at home. Some things NEVER change!
Firelock76Sounds like some things don't change, do they?
Perhaps you'll bear with me for my own military story. I was a medic assigned to Walter Reed Hospital. My First Sergeant had a very gruff manner and all of us were intimidated by it. One day I went to the Post Barber Shop for a haircut. There was the First Sergeant with his son who was 3 or 4 fighting and screaming at the idea of a haircut. And the Sergeant was reduced to begging his son to be quite because it was not going to hurt.
John, I agree with your assessment of Lincoln. Has he not been president there's a good possibility Confederate independence would have been a reality. Any other in the White House would have had to respond to the attack on Fort Sumter, as Lincoln did, but as the war dragged on with one Union defeat after another (in the East, anyway) and the general war-weariness setting in there's no guarantee another man wouldn't have said "Oh, the hell with it! This war's not worth it! Let them go and good riddance!"
I've said it before, in his own quiet way Lincoln was the most implacable enemy the Confederates had. He wasn't going to quit, at least not until he won the war or lost re-election.
Now here's an interesting thing. If the Democratic Party's presidential ticket in the election of 1860 hadn't been split three ways between Steven Douglas, John Breckenridge, and John Bell, Lincoln wouldn't have been elected at all. All three together gathered more votes than Lincoln did. Lincoln wasn't even allowed on the ballot in several Southern states! A straight Lincoln-Douglas match-up would have seen Douglas in the White House. How things would have turned out then is anyones guess.
My information is that Dennis H. Mahan began teaching at West Point in 1824 and he taught Jomini's theories. Also, at this time, it was only theories out of the Napoleonic wars that were taught at West Point. I think Henri Jomini began writing long before he finished his main work.
Please understand that I myself have never studies Jomini or any other kind of war strategy. I don't dispute that he advocated destroying your opponent's army. However, preserving your own army was even more important. Without your own men you would not be able to fight at all. This led to a lot of moving troops around to gain a superior position. Once it was clear that one side had the superior position the other side would withdraw to avoid loosing troops and the battle was over. The key to a superior position was inside lines. A war theater was seen (ideally) as a section of a circle with battle lines being concentric circles. Whoever had the inner section (interior lines) had shorter distances to march and thus had an advantage. However, Christopher Gabel points out railroads made the advantage of interior lines obsolete.
I agree with your assessment of the war in the west. New Orleans fell early one and the Mississippi north of Vicksburg shortly after that. The Confederacy was divided. And I agree that Confederate losses could not be replaced while Union losses could be. Material losses couldn't be replaced because of poor management. However, losses of Confederate men could never be replaced. That is why I question Lee's aggressiveness. I think he was too willing to sacrifice his men. While he gained victories with that sacrifice he eroded his ability and the Confederacy's ability to continue the fight.
And Abe Lincoln. Lincoln was an unknown both to the Confederates and the British. They thought that William Seward, who was known, would actually be in charge. Seward would have been willing to negotiate a peace and was in fact negotiating a peace early in 1861 until it became clear to him Lincoln would never agree to it. Had Lincoln not been president I think the Confederates would have succeeded with at most a short war and perhaps no war at all.
Keep your energy level high, John
Here's an interesting Confederate railroad story: A Confederate officer home on leave wrote to a friend "Hell on Earth isn't the battlefield, it's being trapped in a railroad coach with a screaming infant for six hours! My God, it was worse than Gettysburg!"
Sounds like some things don't change, do they?
After making my last post last night, I found a map that shows the railroads existing in Alabama in 1865. The only railroad in the Elyton vicinity was the South and North Alabama, which then ran from Calera to Oxmoor (about seven miles south of Elyton).
You could go from Tensaw (east of the Tombigbee River), near Mobile, to Atlanta on the Mobile and Great Northern Railroad (change at Pollard), the Alabama and Florida Railroad (change at Montgomery), the Montgomery and West Point Railroad (change at West Point), and the Atlanta and West Point Railroad. The M&WP at that time also went from Opelika to Columbus, Georgia (this line later became part of the Central of Georgia). The map indicates a line into Columbus from the east, but gives no information as to its origin (possibly Macon).
You could also go from Blue Mountain (southwest of Jacksonville) to Meridian, Mississippi, on the Alabama & Tennessee River Railroad (change at Selma) and the Selma & Meridain Railroad. The A&T connected with the S&N Alabama at Calera, so Elyton did have rail connections with Meridian which made it possible to continue on to Jackson and Vicksburg.
The Mobile and Girard (which never came from Mobile) extended from Girard, on the M&WP, just across the Chattahoochee from Columbus, to Union Springs.
The Mobile and Ohio could take you north from Mobile through Meridian to Columbus, Kentucky, where you would be ferried to a connection with the Illinois Central.
And, of course, there was the Memphis & Charleston, which connected Cahttanooga and Memphis, using trackage rights over the Nashville & Chattanooga east of Stevenson. At Decatur, the Tennessee & Alabama, Central Railroad came down from Nashville, which had the Louisville & Nashville.
Railroads had been planned, and some constructed, to connect centers of commerce, and not just to connect agricultural areas with ports.
Johnny
Firelock76At any rate Jomini got it wrong when he was trying to devine Napoleons "secret" of warfare, which surprises me he since he served under "Boney". Clausewitz got it: The object is to destroy the enemys army, which is what Napoleon always tried to do. While the army exists, the state exists. Destroy the army, you destroy the state. In the end that's what happened to the Confederacy. Johnny Reb carried the Confederacy on his back fo four years, and when his back was broken, well...
Perhaps a better description of Napoleon's 'secret' was that, in order to destroy a large allied force, effectively mass and maneuver so as to beat each PART of it sequentially, and take advantage of any discoordination of command in that allied force.
That 'lesson' was quite adequately demonstrated by a number of the Confederate leaders, including Jackson and Lee. Again, it helped that they were fighting in 'known' country. Be interesting to see exactly how much example of contemporary war training West Point was providing at the time, and whether Jackson et al. were influenced by an early form of 'case-based reasoning' when looking at where Napoleon actually succeeded, and where he failed -- and why.
Allerlei:
There was no Birmingham until 1871, though Elyton was founded in 1821 and was absorbed into Birmingham. I am not certain when it was discovered that all three raw materials for iron manufacture (iron ore, limestone, and coal) were found in the area (the only such place in the world), but I do not believe that there was much done to make use of them until after the War.
As to friendships existing between the belligerents, there indeed were many. After General Lee surrendered, General Longstreet rode over to see General Grant, and the two men embraced one another. There were instances during the war when long-time friends , especially officers, faced one another in battle. And, there were enmities within families when one member fought on one side and another fought on the other side. Ambrose Bierce wrote a horrible story about such a situation, in which a young man in Virginia saw his father, a day or two after he had left home to fight on the side of the Union, and shot him.
There was one loss in my family in that war; my maternal grandfather's oldest brother, a student at The Citadel, died of typhus in camp without ever having been in battle. I know of one loss in my wife's family; a uncle of her great-grandfather, (I think he was in an Ohio regiment, though another uncle was in an Illinois regiment), died in a hospital in Nashville (the record we have does not give the cause of his death).
Incidentally, my wife, the daughter of an Ohioan and a Pennsylvanian, born in Evanston, Ill., always married "a blue-eyed John from South Carolina." Her first husband (great-grandson of Johann Niernsee, who designed the State House (except for the abomination of a cupola that sits at the top) in Columbia) was born in Columbia and grew up in Georgetown, D.C., and I was born in Tampa and grew up in South Carolina.
Hi John! (Don't know where I got this burst of enegy from.)
I did some checking on Jomini. His theorys of warfrare weren't published until 1838. Lee graduated from West Point in 1829, Jeff Davis in 1828, and Joseph Johnston in 1828 as well. Now I can't say these men NEVER read Jomini, but they didn't read him when they were cadets. Just what kind of influence it had on them seems hard for me to guess.
At any rate Jomini got it wrong when he was trying to devine Napoleons "secret" of warfare, which surprises me he since he served under "Boney". Clausewitz got it: The object is to destroy the enemys army, which is what Napoleon always tried to do. While the army exists, the state exists. Destroy the army, you destroy the state. In the end that's what happened to the Confederacy. Johnny Reb carried the Confederacy on his back fo four years, and when his back was broken, well...
When I said time was the Confederacy's enemy I thought carefully. If you step back and look at the "big picture" of the Civil War you can see that the South started losing almost from the beginning. Slowly in the west, Southern territory was being nibbled away, both up and down the Mississippi, in Tennessee, in Arkansas. While the Virginia theater of operations was getting all the PR, the South was losing ground in the west that eventually would prove a devastating loss.
Also, every bullet and shell fired was a matierial loss. Every iron cannon that wore out was a loss, iron guns couldn't be re-cast. Slowly their matierial resources were being whittled away. And it goes without saying every dead or crippled Johnny Reb was a loss from a manpower pool that was small to begin with that couldn't be replaced. Throw Abe Lincoln into the mix, who was patient and willing to wait until Doomsday to defeat the Rebs if that's how long it took.
It's a tribute to the Confederate soldier he kept the dream alive as long as he did.
PS
At the war's beginning the Union was an agrarian mercantile society and not an industrial society. Industrialization did begin with the Civil War and it produced a new country that did not exist when the war began.
But the Confederates did not really need industry. They could get everything they needed from Britain and they did. It took a long time for the blockade to take effect. The trouble was that the Confederates let their railroads run down to the point where they couldn't get get supplies to their troops in the field.
Firelock76 Well, time was NOT the friend of the Confederates. While their ability to build an industrial plant almost from nothing was a great achivement, they could never hope to meet the North's industrial output, or the Norths almost endless supply of manpower. If they were going to win, they had to win it quickly, and I think the "stars" of the Confederate Army knew that, but they just couldn't quite pull it off. (Was this the "hand of God" here? I'm not religious, but sometimes I wonder.) Oh, I should point out the Northern US wasn't the industrial powerhouse it would become, not yet. In 1861 75% of the North's GDP was still in agricultural products. However, the base for industrial expansion was there, just waiting for a big infusion of cash to get it going. Industrial America was born with the Civil War.
Well, time was NOT the friend of the Confederates. While their ability to build an industrial plant almost from nothing was a great achivement, they could never hope to meet the North's industrial output, or the Norths almost endless supply of manpower. If they were going to win, they had to win it quickly, and I think the "stars" of the Confederate Army knew that, but they just couldn't quite pull it off. (Was this the "hand of God" here? I'm not religious, but sometimes I wonder.) Oh, I should point out the Northern US wasn't the industrial powerhouse it would become, not yet. In 1861 75% of the North's GDP was still in agricultural products. However, the base for industrial expansion was there, just waiting for a big infusion of cash to get it going. Industrial America was born with the Civil War.
Firelock,
It is not clear to me that time was not the friend of the Confederates. It seems to me that it was but many Confederates failed to see that. In order to win the Union had to occupy and subdue hundreds of square miles of hostile territory. All the Confederacy had to do was to avoid loosing. Had they -- had Robert E. Lee -- played for time he would never have marched into the North. He would have stayed in the South and fought a defensive war winning battles but not at the cost of his men. He was too aggressive and willing to exchange some loss of men for a greater Union loss of men. In they sense he never understood Henri Jomini. And so from the time he began his manpower was constantly eroded until Gettysburg when many of his men were lost. Lincoln did have an advantage in that he could replace his losses but that advantage was not without its costs. It wasn't just immigrants who were sacrificed for the war; plenty of native born Americans were too and there was a lot of weeping over lost sons and brothers and fathers. Northern songs like "We shall meet / but we shall miss him / There will be / A vacant chair...." and the last sad verse of "When Johnny comes marching home again" attest to the war weariness and the sense of loss. Had the Confederacy dragged that out I think they would have won.
OvermodI squarely attribute the problem to the states' rights formulation of the Confederacy, rightly or wrongly. Where there is no perceived interest in 'national' or more precisely 'Confederal' improvements, you will see precisely the 'not-MY-problem' sort of behavior that wrecked the coherence of the Southern railroad system.
Overmod,
Jefferson Davis, who knew the problems if anyone at all knew them, said the Confederacy "died of a theory." And it seems to me you say pretty much the same thing.
Davis certainly had a hard row to hoe. He had to create a government from nothing. And when he did he had states threatening to secede from the Confederacy. When Abe Lincoln decided to suspend habeas corpus he was able to do so; Davis could not possibly have done so and he similar problems. But for all of that he seems never to have tried to organize the railroads he did have into any kind of coherent system.
Just a few things, Overmod. As far as Tredegar Iron Works is concerned they COULD produce railroad supplies (not locomotives, however) but the problem was they were totally involved with war production. "We can make anything you want" General Joseph Anderson, owner of Tredegar said, and he was right, but they couldn't make EVERYTHING at the same time. With the demands for cannon and other ordnance, to say nothing of armor plate for the ironclad fleet, something had to give, and unfortunately it was railroad equipment and supplies.
I don't know much about the Birmingham works so I can't comment on it, but I wouldn't be surprised if the same was true.
Certainly there was the Southern arrogance of "one Southerner can whip ten Yankees", but that was limited to the popular press and opinion. The professional soldiers knew better.
And their expecting a repeat of the Revolutionary War, well, they drew the wrong conclusions. General Washington figured out pretty early that as long as he maintained an army in the field and protracted the war as long as he could the expense of fielding an army 3,000 miles from home would surely wear the British resolve to win. Oh, he'd fight when he was sure of a win, but he'd never risk it all on one throw of the dice. In a nutshell, Washington knew time was his friend.
I may have rambled a bit but it's been a looooooooooooooooong week on the job. I'm tired.
I'll say one more thing: When I was in the Marines all my best friends were Southerners, guys from Georgia, South Carolina, Louisiana, and Texas. Who'd have thought a Yankee would have hit it off so well with those guys? Thank God I wasn't a professional American soldier in 1861. I can't imagine what it was like to look across a killing zone and see a best friend on the other side. What a tragedy. What a waste.
I had the opportunity to go back and look over Angus Sinclair's Development of the Locomotive Engine (now available as a scanned free download, everyone should 'own' a copy). There I was dramatically reminded of something that I had essentially forgotten that may be relevant to this discussion.
Where was the first REAL common-carrier railroad operated by locomotive built? (B&O doesn't count here, it was built to horse-railroad standards and didn't get effectively built to any distance for 20 years...)
Largely responsible for this was E.L.Miller, who is also attributed with the successful locomotive designs (where at least one famous Northern 'name' in the early field failed more or less miserably). Years later than that, he developed a traction increaser that was perceived as being of such value to Matt Baldwin that he bought the patent outright.
So in part we may have to look elsewhere than engineering or competence to discover the problems or issues with Southern railroading. Some of those have already been mentioned early on in the discussion. One other name is missing that I can't explain, though, and that is Hermann Haupt. Had there been even one 'officla' Southern counterpart, there was enough infrastructure (at Tredegar and in Birmingham alone!) to have neatly kept Southern railroading going as necessary for war aims -- assisted materially by that famous characteristic of the 'War of Northern Aggression' that it was, in fact, invasion of familiar ground by people largely unfamiliar with it. New line construction -- well, far more aailable manpower, and far less need to pay cash for it (note: Mr. Wimberly et al., I'm not broaching that certain taboo word directly).
I squarely attribute the problem to the states' rights formulation of the Confederacy, rightly or wrongly. Where there is no perceived interest in 'national' or more precisely 'Confederal' improvements, you will see precisely the 'not-MY-problem' sort of behavior that wrecked the coherence of the Southern railroad system. And this is particularly ironic in light of the quite-recent-at-that-time economic disaster to small enterprise throughout the South that followed Jackson's elimination of non-ruinous-interest credit and subsequent depression. You can get all Beardian and talk about a 'planterocracy' interested in nothing but preserving its peculiar institutions at everyone else's expense... but that's not all there is to it.
I am forced to a conclusion: that the general arrogance regarding Southern intellectual and social supremacy, even extending to a racial basis in the years just before the War, were largely to blame for the problem. By the time it became apparent that the 'miracle' of the Revolutionary War was not going to be repeated by Southern yeomanry... things were too far gone for anyone short of a Haupt to even start to fix. And, there being no Haupts or Millers to do what was needed ... well, we all know.
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