William Tyler
Into Conflict and Civil War
William Tyler - Into Conflict and Civil War
- And welcome everyone to this, what are we now? We’re the third talk, aren’t we in the history of America, or the second? I can’t, I do know, everything gets so confusing. All day I thought it was Tuesday because yesterday I gave the extra talk to lockdown and I can’t get it out of my head, it’s Tuesday. Nevermind, it is Monday. And I’m talking about America and I’m talking about the Civil War. Now, I’m not going to do a talk about the Civil War like many of us received, whether we were American educated or not, which really becomes a list of battles. And if you are my age, you had to learn the dates and the names of the battles and you were asked to write them down in exams and tests. I’m not doing that. If you want to know about the military history and battle by battle, one of the best books is a book by John Keegan called “The American Civil War: A Military History”. It’s on my blog, John Keegan, “The American Civil War”. If you want to look at a particular battle, and I guess many people would plump to know more about Gettysburg, then there is a whole book. There were lots of books, but there’s a whole book by Stephen Sears, simply called “Gettysburg”. And there are thousands of books about the American Civil War, and there’s thousands of books about individual battles in the American Civil, or individual issues like the Naval Campaign. So I’m not going through it campaign by campaign, and I’ve taken my lead from Simon Sebag Montefiore’s latest book “The World”, which is now available in paperback and I guess in paperback across all our countries. It is an excellent book as Simon Sebag Montefiore is such a wonderful writer.
And he deals with the American Civil War in about three or four pages. And you might say, “Well, that’s ridiculous to use that as a model.” But I am, because in those few pages, he encapsulates everything that I think and obviously he thought was important about the American Civil War. So I make no apologies for attempting to talk about the war within the space of one hour because Simon Sebag Montefiore does it within the scope of a few pages. Now, clearly my American listeners will know far more than people perhaps in other parts of the world who are listening in. I will try and make it as clear as I can for those who are not American, what is going on? And for those of you who are American, I hope that there may be some insights which perhaps you didn’t earlier get. That’s my intention. Anyhow, let us begin. As I said, we would last week with the presidential election in November, 1860. That is the year before the war began. When Abraham Lincoln is elected the Republican president, the first Republican president. Remember, the Republican party is a relatively new party. And please remember those of you who are not American, that the Republican party here in the 19th century is not the Republican party of today. This Republican party was anti-slavery and it was represented mainly by people in the North and West. The Democrats were in the South, and although Democrats in the North, many opposed slavery, Democrats in the South, many approved of it.
For those of us in other countries outside of the States, it’s difficult to come to terms with the way that the parties have shifted. It would be much easier if I was talking in 18th century times because in 18th century Britain, our politics was very similar to what American politics was and has been since the end of the 19th century. It is, well, both of Democrats and the Republicans are coalitions, and that is exactly the same in Britain with the conservative Labour Party. But they have maintained their political, they’ve retained their place on the political spectrum in a way that Democrats and Republicans have not because they’ve shifted. So just remember that Lincoln is Republican, but he’s anti-slavery. And this is the first Republican president because this is the Republicans who’ve taken over from the earlier wig opposition to the Democrats. The Democrats are still of course there. Now, that’s a long winded way. So what was Lincoln, who was he, what was he like? Well, I’m going to read you just a couple of lines from Simon Sebag Montefiore, it also proves what an excellent book it is. Simon Sebag Montefiore writes off Lincoln at the time of his election campaign and his election in November, 1860. “The recently formed Republican party chose as their presidential candidate in 1860, a little known prairie lawyer.” Lawyers, my fellow lawyers listening to me tonight, know that lawyers have been prominent in the politics of all democracies. “Little known prairie lawyer and former Congressman, Abraham Lincoln. Six foot four, grey eyed, simian, and loquacious.”
Simian and loquacious are lovely adjectives to describe Lincoln. Simian of course, is monkey like. Loquacious of course, we all know is that like me doesn’t stop talking. “He was born in a Kentucky log cabin.” Kentucky in the Civil War is one of those states that are between North and South. It was divided in terms of its male population, 50/50 in favour of the South, and the North, in rough terms, it never seceded from the North. So he’s born in Kentucky in a log cabin and that’s got to be worth a few votes in the America of the 1860s. “Lincoln had been promoted.” His PR team, in other words we’d say today, had promoted him as, “Honest Abe and The Railsplitter.” We should say what a rail splitter is for non-Americans, a backwoodsman used to splitting logs. In other words, he sold to the American electorate as a no nonsense man of the people. What you see is what you get. Well, Lincoln is actually far more complex than that. It isn’t as straightforward as you might think or those who are not Americans might think, Lincoln is more complicated. Now, I cannot obviously in the space now, go into the details of Lincoln and his policies and so on, but it is important to note he was sold on one platform, but the reality is somewhat different. At the time he was elected at the end of 1860, the slide towards warfare between North and South is gathering a pace. And in the magazine that I’ve used on the magazine Star on the story of the American Civil War, look at my blog for all the books, and pamphlets, and all the rest of it. Says this about the 1860 election.
“Talk of secession was ripe in the South at the time of Lincoln’s victory in November, 1860, particularly in states where slave work cotton plantations dominated the economy. There was a fear among them that the Republicans,” who are against slavery, “That the Republicans would arrest away their slaves. And this had to be avoided at all costs.” It’s a question of cash. I’ve said, and I would go on saying throughout this course, and I say it in other courses too, it’s Clinton, it’s the economy, stupid. And here it is, how dare they take the slaves away ‘cause if they do, how do we replace them and still make the profits and live the life that we do? That’s a pretty straightforward sort of answer. Now obviously Lincoln won the November, 1860 election, but he failed even to make the ballot in 10 of the Southern states. The division was there for all to see a year before the war actually started. Overall, in the election, six out of ten voters voted against Lincoln. But all of us who live in democracies know that the way that democracies work, certainly British and American, which is a two horse race, basically, it’s first pass the post. We all know the intricacies and vagaries of democracy. And it doesn’t mean because you don’t get the maximum number of votes and individual votes of the population you necessarily lose. It depends how the votes are distributed, we all know that.
And it’s one of the defaulting situations in both the States and in Britain, and I guess in those countries which do not have proportional representation like Israel, that has its own problems. But in countries like Canada and Australia too, it raises issues, but it doesn’t actually matter, of course, does it? Because once the president is elected, like in our case, a prime minister is in power, they’re in power, and no one then asks about where they got their votes from until the next election if they’re standing. And then the question is, as it is in the States at the moment, can Trump hold on to the votes that he had in the election before last or even in the last election and build upon it? These are the debates of a democracy. Three months, three months after Lincoln is elected, Jefferson Davis was elected in the South as the provisional president of the Confederate States of America. Later, of course totally endorsed by those states. And Jefferson Davis is president of the Southern states. But this is a civil war. So prior to the war, Jefferson has a straightforward political career. Prior to the war, General Lee is a member, of course, of the Federal Army. It’s the war that makes the split. Jefferson Davis was originally a member of the House of Representatives, but he gave up his seat in order to fight in the Mexican War where he was a war hero. This isn’t some pen pusher who is elected by others to be president of the Confederacy. This is an ex war leader. When he came back from the war, he actually entered the Senate. And in 1853 he was made Secretary of War in the federal government. So this isn’t some firebrand, his life was dedicated to the revolution of the South.
And he became a senator, again, before the war. But in the end, he, like so many in the South who had served the federal administration, served in the Federal Army, said enough is enough. We cannot have them dictating to the states what our policy should be, race slaves in particular. We’ve been through all of that in previous talk. South Carolina was the first Southern state to secede from the union, and it did so even before Lincoln took office, it did so in December. Remember that the elections in November in America, but the president takes office the following year. On the 20th of December, 1860, South Carolina was the first to secede. Now if you look things up like on Wikipedia, be very careful because there are moments that Southern states seceded and moments at which it was formally approved by that state. So there are differences, but it doesn’t matter. In the end, we land up with South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas and Mississippi, Florida and Virginia, Arkansas and North Carolina, and Tennessee. Well, if you knew nothing except that it was North and South, and you looked at politics in the States today from outside, from Europe or Canada or wherever, and we asked guess, say to bright children that knew nothing about the American Civil War, said to them, “Guess which states seceded.” Well, you wouldn’t, you’d be pretty accurate. I think most people get them, South Carolina and North Carolina, Alabama, well of course Alabama, Louisiana and Georgia, Texas and Mississippi, Florida and Virginia, Arkansas and Tennessee.
Then there are those interim states between the North and the South states like Missouri, and Kentucky, and Delaware, and Maryland, who sent men to both the Northern armies and the Southern armies and did not secede. Now, the South claimed that Missouri was recognised by the South, but it didn’t secede. So there’s these states in the middle. So why didn’t they make a decision? Well, they had slaves and some of them are very few slaves, but some more, like Delaware. But the division is because they, where they are geographically, their economy was geared to the North. These are not cotton plantations. These are geared to the North economically, but to the South culturally. And they were thus divided. They are not. It’s not a barrier between North and South. And it wasn’t seen as such by either of the armies either. Had the South won, undoubtedly these border states would’ve happily signed up to the South. As it happened, of course, that choice never had to be made. In the four years of succession between 1861 and 1865, they didn’t need to make that, and indeed they couldn’t because they were deeply divided in terms of their male voting population. Now, Lincoln’s position in the North is also not a strong one. Phil Davis, in his pocket account of the American Civil War writes this about Lincoln. He writes, “A few of his political and military leaders in the North thought much of their new president, Lincoln, in 1861. Lincoln’s physical appearance provoked a mixed response. His figure was large, six foot four, but ungainly, his movements lacking in grace. He had prominent features, the nose and ears, especially.
This combination of large extremities and ungainliness led one of his generals who was the commander in chief at the beginning of the war, George McClellan, to refer to him as the Gorilla.” Well, I think if I was president and my commander in chief kept referring to me, well, not to my face, but behind my back as a gorilla, I don’t think I’d be too pleased. “The nickname, the Gorilla, also implied a low opinion of the president’s intellect.” He’s a lawyer from the prairie , oh for goodness sake, he’s not one of us, is what they’re saying. “A view common among the Washington elite.” Well, this is exactly the same as in Britain. There’s this class. I know Americans don’t think they have these class divides, but this is a class divide if ever there was one. “Oh, have you seen the new president? Oh my God, he’s a gorilla.” And they probably spoke in quite a British upper class accent. It’s not good. Let me finish by reading this. “Lincoln’s homespun wit was mistaken for rural idiocy and the subtle and indirect way he had of addressing contentious issues so as not to commit himself unwisely as a lack of coherence and purpose. A political novice having sat only briefly in the House of Representatives, he had spent most of his career practising law.” Well, practising law is hardly something to attack someone about, but it’s a fact of where he came from, from the prairies, from a log cabin where he was born. He’s not one of us said the elite in Washington drawing rooms and over Washington dinner tables. “My God, you’re not thinking of inviting the President, my dear, are you, to dinner? Well, I don’t think a man could string a sentence again.” They take a low view of it. It’s interesting given how Lincoln today is this huge figure in American history.
“Though his father-in-law owns slaves, Lincoln always detested,” quote, this is Lincoln’s phrase, “'Peculiar institution, believing in a society that rewarded on the base of individual merit and effort, not birthright and privilege.’ Lincoln considered the dramatic experiment in government, a divine vocation assigned to American people.” Well, those of you who heard me speak yesterday about religion in the States, well, there it all is in those few sentences. “That had been chosen to show the world that government, by the people of the people and for the people was viable. He wrote,” this is Lincoln, “The issue embraces more than the fate of these United States. It presents to the whole family of man the question whether a constitutional republic or democracy can or cannot maintain its territorial integrity against its own domestic foes.” In other words, we have to fight for the democracy and the constitution of the United States because we are a beacon to the world. And therefore, if there is a challenge to that internally, challenge is externally would be taken for granted, I think, challenges internally as the Southern states of secede must be dealt with, with a firm hand. That’s not of course a view that any of the western democracies I think will take today. If we take Britain, for example, if Scotland voted to leave, we’re not going to send the British Army or English Army into Scotland. We would let it happen. And was there to be, hypothetically, a move by California at some time to withdraw from the Union, no American president in Washington is going to send the army into California.
We would not resort to civil war as they did in the 19th century. This raises interesting questions to my mind about, well, controversial to say perhaps, but why the Western democracies, America, Britain, Canada, or all the Western democracies would rather split than go to war. We’ll have to see what happens in Catalonia, for example, but I do not for one moment think Spain will go to war with Catalonia. I think there would be an acceptance if people really wanted to withdraw from a country, that would be allowable, it would be negotiated. It would not lead to civil war. You see, civil wars are particularly depressing. Think back to the Yugoslav Civil War after the fall of communism in the East, old grievances reassert themselves. Brother can fight brother, father, son, wife, husband. It divides families as much as it divides a nation. Nothing is ever quite so simple. Many Northerners we’re married to Southerners, many Southerners married to Northerners, many Scots married to English men, many English women married to Scots men. We live in a much more complex world, but they were also in this complex modern world. If I return to Simon, I wish he’d write, I wish it wasn’t so heavy to hold this book. Simon Sebag Montefiore says this. Interesting, he gives an example about divisions of civil wars. He writes, “Civil wars divide families and the Roosevelt,” this is Teddy Roosevelt, “The Roosevelt were typical, the ageing millionaire CVS Roosevelt and his son Theodore were passionately abolitionist and Yankee. But the latter’s wife,” in other words, the daughter-in-law of the millionaire, “Mittie, was an equally passionate confederate. She gave birth in 1859.” There’s a mistake in Montefiore’s book. He says 1860, it’s 1859, “Gave birth to the future American president Teddy Roosevelt.” But she was a Southern belle. She was beautiful.
And that’s why the original millionaire, Roosevelt married her. She was a Southern belle. In fact, she was so beautiful that it said that the character of Scarlett O'Hara in the film “Gone with the Wind” was thought to have been one of the inspirations for that character. Can’t prove it, but that’s what said happened. She’s also a very social, socialite would be the word of the day in the 19th century. And what did she do in the war? Her husband, her father-in-law were strongly for the North. She made uniforms for the South and her two brothers fought for the South. One of them was the youngest officer on the Confederate Warship, the Alabama. And the other was a Confederate agent, very interestingly to me, was a Confederate agent in England, Scotland, and Wales. Why were the Confederacy interested in seeking help from Britain? Because Britain was dependent upon Southern cotton and Liverpool actually raised money for the Confederacy quite separately from any involvement by the British government. The British government leaned heavily towards a confederacy until it was clear that it wasn’t going to win. The end result of that was, well, we abandoned Confederate cotton and imported from the Empire, Indian cotton and Egyptian cotton. And today, if you go and buy sheets for your bed in Britain, and you want cotton sheets, still today they said, “Well sir, this is the best Egyptian cotton we have.” And it made a change there as well. It’s so interesting how big events can have small knock-on effects. So today we buy Egyptian cotton because it’s the best. Now let’s have an overview of this war, which began in 1861, which we saw last time we met, at Fort Sumter and ended four years later, again in the same month of April when General Lee surrendered.
To make it simple, which is what an overview should do, there are two theatres of war. In the East, it’s fought mainly in the state of Virginia. After all, the Confederate capital was at Richmond in Virginia, which was only 200 miles away from Washington. That’s the danger of Civil War, they’re so close. And the war went backwards and forwards in Virginia, twice did General Lee and the Confederacy advance into the North, twice he was repulsed, and the last time he was repulsed at Gettysburg in ‘64, many historian regard as the beginning of the end of the Confederacy. That was in the East. In the West, the war didn’t begin until 1862 and the North was far more successful straight away. It invaded through the Mississippi Valley. And by doing so, it effectively cut the Confederacy into two parts. There was a little gap between the two parts, which was Vicksburg in Mississippi controlled by the Confederacy. If they lost Vicksburg, the North had done an incredible military thing. It had divided the South between the North South and the South South, if you put it like that. Vicksburg held out for pretty well a year. I said the war in the West began in '62, they held out until July '63. They surrendered on the 4th of July, 1863. A day before Lee’s Confederate Army, which had sought to invade Virginia, was defeated in a three day battle at Gettysburg, the bloodiest battle of them all. It was the Duke of Wellington who remarked of another battle, “It was a damn close-run thing,” and Gettysburg was. and all the Americans, I’m sure something I’d love to do is to go to Gettysburg.
And I’m so jealous of all of you who’ve been, and not only Americans, lots of British people have been to Gettysburg. And to see the sight Pickett’s Charge, which was the last romantic charge, the last throw of the dice by Lee. Now, as I said earlier, many historians regard Gettysburg as the changing point of the war. Others disagree, it’s interesting why others disagree. They disagree not on the grounds that Gettysburg wasn’t important, but they disagree simply on the ground that in their view the South was never going to win the war. Population favoured the North, the armaments of the North favour the North and so on and so forth. And you can make those sorts of, well, these are the sorts of arguments that you might have in a sick form in a school where you have a debate and you’ve got one of these balloon debates and one person represents this view, one person the other, and who knows what the result would be in such a debate, depends on who speaks best. Was the South bound to lose? Well, in percentage terms, I think the chances are it would, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it would, it might get to a position when the war began of forcing the North to recognise the South as a separate country. And that was possible.
I think, if you want my opinion, that Gettysburg was absolutely crucial. Having taken Vicksburg and had defeated Lee at Gettysburg, the North is triumphant, morale is high, whilst morale is falling in the South. This is 1864, the war is over by 1865. I think this is a turning point. Now, let me stop there. I’ll come back to the chronological story later. But I want to say a word because it’s important, and it’s important to the incompetence of the British In 1914. After the American Civil War was over, they taught the American Civil War at the British Officer Training College at Sandhurst, the equivalent of West Point. And they were able to teach it because Britain had observers in this war and they saw it firsthand. And it was a modern war. Many historians say it was the first modern war. And I think, well, I think you can easily make that case, but Britain didn’t learn from it. We thought it was going to be a war of movement. And we forgot the fact that there were trenches in the American Civil War, not unlike the trenches of the First World War, we failed to recognise that the Gatling gun, which is the prototype of the machine gun of the First World War, did enormous damage. And by 1940 we have machine guns, the development from the Gatling gun. We also see the development of rifles during the war. And then also didn’t seem to affect the volley, we saw the use of ironclad ships. We saw the use of submarines for goodness sake. We saw the use of hydrogen balloons to do records of the fold, to work out where they were going.
There was a huge number of lessons that could have been taught, and we never taught them. Instead we taught the Boer War of the 1890s fought on the open belt of South Africa. Nothing like the American Civil War either in terms of terrain, or in terms of advanced equipment on both sides. Just it was not the same. I am, I wish I could talk to one of the lecturers at Sandhurst who was lecturing between the end of the American Civil War and the beginning of the First World War. Did they lecture on a Friday afternoon at four o'clock in the summer term when all the junior officers all wanted to do was go out and play cricket or go out and get drunk and no one paid attention? Or were the lecturers so boring that people didn’t listen? Or was it so complicated and totally outside of their experience that they never internalised it? I don’t know, but it seems to me one of those questions which perhaps we’ll never get an answer to. So what are these technological and modern warfare changes? First of all, it’s a problem of how politicians could in a democracy command generals by appointing them and dismissing them. Now, we didn’t learn that lesson in Britain in the First World War. Well, we did get rid of French and replace him by Haig. But the prime minister, David Lloyd George hated Haig and said he should have got rid of him and to appoint the Canadian or the Australian general in his place. But he said the Army wouldn’t like it. Lincoln didn’t care. Lincoln is determined. Lincoln got so cross with McClellan. He’s reported to have said, “I’ll get rid of that man. I’ll do it myself.”
Instead of course, in '54, sorry, in '64, he appoints Grant, who turns out to be. Is interesting how sometimes men rise to the occasion Grant did like a cromwellian figure to my mind, a man who rose to the occasion as a volunteer soldier who lands up as commander in chief and is fixated on victory, and Grant is the difference in the end. But Lincoln dismisses generals and appoint better generals. Churchill did what Lincoln did, in World War II. He didn’t like Montgomery, but he appointed Montgomery. Lincoln And Grant had very little in common as men, but Lincoln recognised the brilliance of Grant. So the first lesson then, is politicians remain in charge in a war. Lincoln, in the American Civil War, Churchill in World War II. But being in charge means they have to take the tough decisions. They must not think in terms of what the army might think. That doesn’t matter. They are the ones where the buck stops. There were new weapons. The old musket is replaced. Now you’ll find different words used. Some of the words used are rifled musket. The rifling is the rifling that’s in the actual barrel. Some of them sometimes it’s referred to as rifles. It’s the interim between the rifle proper and the musket, although by the end of the war, the North, but not the South, had what are known as carbines, which are basically rifles. When I was at school and in the School Corps, army Corps, we had carbines in the first term, and our carbines were British ones from the Boer War.
Thank God they didn’t fire anymore because had they done so, I don’t think I’d be here talking to you. But the carbines were introduced at the end of the war, but only the North had. Why, because the North had the manufacturing capability to produce them. But the rifling was not the only thing that improved the old musket. The French had invented cone-shaped bullets, which meant they could fire faster without the use of mallets to bang them in. And they were more accurate and therefore more deadly. That’s why they were trenches. You had to get your head down. You couldn’t gently duck the thing. And as we went through the war, then we get the development of the Spencer Carbine, as I’ve said, and particularly in the North. So we see a development in the basic infantry weapon, the musket towards the rifle. This is why we can describe the American Civil War as the first modern war. More than that, we have the Gatling gun. Now that of course, for those of us who are British, we associate the Gatling gun with the Empire mowing down indigenous peoples across the Empire. Here, it’s used to mow down fellow Americans. It is not a machine gun as we know it from World War I. It actually had a cranking handle. It has six chambers, so that’s an improvement on a musket rifle with one chamber. It has six chambers. And you simply wind it down to which someone would say, “Come on, William, do it faster.” And that Gatling gun was not used extensively, but it was used.
And the British officers watching this war should have seen what that was capable of. And by 1900, 1910, and so on, that this has been so improved that they should have have got the message, and they didn’t. Because in World War I, it is the machine gun that is responsible for so many deaths in the trenches. But what’s developed here in the American Civil War. I’ve mentioned the hydrogen balloons, but there’s also telegraphs, telegraph to send messages from the front to another front, from the front to headquarters, and so on. That’s a massive improvement. And we’ve all seen pictures of the First World War in films where officers in the trenches are sending telegraphic communications back to headquarters and receiving messages from headquarters on what they were to do. Submarines. The first submarine was the Confederate submarine, the Hunley. It sank a Northern blockade ship in 1864 called the Housatonic. I hope I’m not pronounced that correctly. Americans will get very cross in my pronunciation today, but it also itself sank. So this is very interesting. The first submarine, the first submarine to sink an enemy ship and the first submarine itself to be sunk.
There was an explosion, nobody got off the submarine. But that’s, for goodness sake, that is telling people that submarine warfare is important. Of course, it’s important to Britain in both World Wars because otherwise the ships bringing food and war material from the States of Britain, were being attacked by German submarines. And we had to develop a convoy system to cope with that. All the lessons are there for those who’ve got eyes to see in the American Civil War. I said the rifles at the end of the war of the Union Army were far superior. One Union soldier wrote, “I think the Johnnies,” the Johnnies are the Confederate troops. “I think the Johnnies are getting rattled. They’re afraid of our repeating rifles.” They, in other words, you could fire by putting more bullets in the barrel. You didn’t have to do it one by one, you could do it. And so it says, “I think the Johnnies,” the Confederate soldiers, “Are getting rattled. They’re afraid of our repeating rifles. They say, we are not fair that we have guns that we load up on Sunday and shoot all the rest of the week.” Well, of course that isn’t true, but they did have better guns. Is that not the issue with Ukraine asking NATO countries for better weapons in order to combat the Russian weapons? It’s always important. In modern warfare, numbers alone are not going to give you victory, you need weapons.
The North had them and it had the numbers, granted. The South did not have them. Had there been countries prepared to do more than Britain did, which was pretty limited to provide more weapons and more modern weapons to the South, the story might have turned out differently. So there’s all sorts of lessons to be learned. We, there’s also a lesson about railroads, railways to move war material, to move food for the troops, and indeed to move the troops themselves. The unionists had 22,000, the North had 22,000 miles of standardised gauge railway. The South had only 9,000, but it wasn’t standardised. You came to the end of one railway and the next one didn’t join on, and they had massive problems with that. The North could just sweep through where they wanted. The North developed the first ambulance corps. The ironclad ships, which fought for the first time in 1862, the Monitor and the Virginia, the Monitor for the North the Virginia for the South. The ships had naval mines that could be dropped. They also developed torpedoes. This is going to change warfare, thus in the Navy in 1914 in Britain, The Navy has all of this equipment, but still believes in its admirals. Still thought they were commanding a Nelsonian fleet from the early 19th century. And all the lessons were really there in the American Civil War about mines and torpedoes and so on, and about how non-ironclad ships were the past, and how bigger ships with bigger guns could simply lie back and shoot out of the water, ships with smaller range of guns. It was a complete mess in terms of the Battle of Jutland in World War I, which always describes a drawn battle. But the British were not the Great Navy of the past. So all of these things happened in the American Civil War.
Now, it may have contrast with Britain, 'cause by the time America comes into the First World War in 1917, the American Army has learned the lessons from 1914 to '17. So when they come and arrive on the Western front, they are far more adjusted in terms of what to expect and how to deal with it. However, it’s worth remarking that although the Americans took, of course, less casualties than the British and French, over the period that the Americans fought in the First World War, the number of deaths were the equivalent of the number of deaths in the British and French army. That they didn’t manage to save lives by knowing it. The proportion of Americans that died was in the same order as the proportion of Britain’s and French soldiers that died only because the Americans fought in two years rather than the four years that the French and the British fought. It’s interesting. Did we learn the lessons after? And that’s another story. I’m not going into that, well, not tonight. But it is important to think about these loss lessons. Now I know, I know that that is not what we did at school.
Oh, we might have done about submarines and if you were an all boys school like me, we were excited about hearing about submarines. But it’s really the development, it’s wars that make developments. We know that, we’ve seen that in Ukraine with the use of drones, and we’ve seen the mass production of drones because of the Ukraine Russian war. There’s one fascinating thing. Well, there’s a number of fascinating thing. I’ve got an eye on the clock. The army, the professional army of the United States before the division in the war, was less than 17,000. So the war was fought by volunteers. The volunteers are in state militias, and it’s really they who fight the war on both sides. During the course of the war, it is the North that enrolled Black regiments under white officers. The South resisted that, although there were at the end of the war, some Black soldiers, but most of the Blacks who fought in the war for the South were slaves who followed their masters, they had no choice. And were cooks, and bottle washers, and blacksmiths of horses, and so forth. Lincoln also turned down the offer of a native American to establish an indigenous American regimen. He said, interesting. “This is a white man’s war.” When Grant became commander in chief, he accepted the offer and a Native American regimen was raised for the North, not the South. There is an extremely interesting note about the army and I will short circuit by reading Davis’s account.
“Both sides suffered the mixed blessing of elected officers and political generals. Used to voting for everything from the county sheriff to the state governor, volunteers, both Union and Confederates, saw no reason why they should not elect their officers too. Through four years of fighting, the democratic spirit never really gave way to the Martinet automatism of a professional army. The Prussian General, von Moltke, famously described the men who fought in the American Civil War as armed mobs.” Now, I’ve said a word about political generals, and I’ve don’t agree with that because I said, in a democracy, the head of government needs to ensure who the generals are. And I gave you the example in addition to Lincoln, of Churchill. But when it comes to the officers, this is like the extreme left in the Cromwellian army in the British Civil War, you don’t necessarily get the best people. You get the most popular sometimes. It’s an interesting thing. And the Americans learned their lesson, of course, after that, and certainly doesn’t happen in the First World War. The losses of this war were horrendous. The North lost 828,000 men killed in battle, died from disease, were wounded or captured. The South lost even more. 864,000 killed either in battle or died of disease or were wounded. And to be wounded was not a good thing in the 1860s, or they were captured.
The total number of deaths is estimated at something between 616,000 and over a million. And we didn’t learn the lesson for 1914. But North won the war, of course it did, we knew that. But the real winner are the Black slaves in the South and of course Black slaves in the North who gained their freedom, although it was a long time to resolve itself into full freedom. The Proclamation, as all the Americans will know, was made on the 1st of January, 1863 by Lincoln. And this is my book on American slavery, which again is on my list by Heather Williams. And Heather Williams writes this in terms of the Proclamation, which began the process of getting rid of slavery. “The official announcement came in the Emancipation Proclamation that Lincoln issued on the 1st of January, 1863. Black men would be allowed to enlist in the Union Army and enslaved men would gain their freedom upon enlistment. The Proclamation also provided that all slaves within territories, under Confederate control were free. Nonetheless, neither the president nor the Union Army had any power to enforce such a declaration. The position was finally clarified on the sixth, the December, 1865, after the war had ended. It was the 13th amendment to the Constitution December, 1865. And it said, 'Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime where of the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States or any place subject to their jurisdiction.’” Slavery had ended in 1865, 32 years after Britain had ended slavery throughout all its dominions. It’s over. Lee surrendered on the 9th of April, 1865 to Grant Johnston surrendered to Sherman on the 16th of April, 1865.
On the 10th of May, Jefferson Davis was captured, indicted for treason, served two years in prison, but died as a free man in New Orleans in 1889. Indeed, in 1869, 4 years after the end of the war Grant, now president Grant, not General Grant, invited General Lee to the White House. Lee was indicted, but not in any way punished. Lee became president of Washington College, Lexington, Virginia, and was president from 1865, the year the war ended to 1870 when he died. So the retribution was limited and indeed in Civil War it needs to be. But the postbellum story is not a simple one. It is absolutely not simple. But there’s a postscript to this story, and the postscript is, “On Good Friday, 1865. On the 14th of April, only 11 days after he’d visited the Confederate capital Richmond to be mobbed by ex-slaves, Abe Lincoln was shot dead at Ford’s Theatre by John Wilkes Booth, a well-known actor and white supremacist. And white supremacy is not dead in the States. So can we even now all these years on draw a line under the American Civil War? The North had won the South had lost, yet many in the South refuse to accept that they’d lost and created the great myth of the South so that even here in Britain, you can see young men riding around on motorbikes with the Confederate flag on their backs.
You can see the argument still in the States, which still has this division, if you like, the myth that the South created, which is exemplified in the film, "Gone With the Wind”, doesn’t mean the story ended with the defeat of the Confederate armies. We need to turn next time to postbellum America, and in doing so, I shall do a tight chronological period. But that’s wrong because in truth, this dreadful divide that divided a nation arguably are still there. White supremacy, Black Lives Matter, for all of this, all of it. We’ve yet to have a Black American president. I don’t count Obama in that. It’s a dreadful story, but then civil wars are dreadful. So next time we’ll see how the reunified country, which means the government in Washington dealt with the South and how the South reacted to the loss. Thank you ever so much for listening tonight, and have a good day. Those of you who have only started your day, I’m finishing mine. I’ve got some questions, hang on, let me put them down. Let me see what I have.
Q&A and Comments:
My grandson bought that book for my husband, but he finds it too heavy to hold any ideas? I think you mean Simon Montefiore’s “The World”, buy the paperback copy and simply break it into manageable pieces. I wouldn’t normally say that. I don’t like touching books in that way, but that’s the only way to do it. That, I’ve got a hardback copy because somebody very kindly bought it for me and it does weigh a tonne, but it’s well worth reading.
Oh, and Rita said there’s a paperback edition. Yes, there is. Oh, and thank you, Rita. You’ve said the American military piece by John Keegan. John Keegan is British, doesn’t mean anything, I don’t think, in terms of his ability to write about the American Civil War. He is one of our preeminent military historians.
“Battle Cry of Freedom”, yes, is excellent to read by James McPherson. That is also on my list that’s on my blog. Lincoln won, because there were four parties running, including candidates for Northern Democrats and Southern Dem. Lincoln got a plurality of votes, not a majority.
Yes, that’s true, Shelly. That’s how it worked. And it was why Lincoln wasn’t on the ballot in the South in some of those Southern states. Shelly says, oh dear, this is going to be a difficult question. Shelly, you are too bright for me, I think.
Q: Do you think states like Virginia would’ve ratified the Constitution if they didn’t think they could use state rights to get out of the Union?
A: I can’t answer, I don’t know. I don’t know. Did, was there a feeling when the states ratified the Constitution in the 18th century that it didn’t matter, they could get out of it? I’m not sure they did. They thought that the state rights would prevent the central federal government interfering and it did, and that’s what was a problem. A hundred years, well, 90 odd years on.
Oh, thank you Thelma. Thelma says, I think Thelma, you can’t be American if you thought that you understood it for the first time. I saw lots of Americans felt it was not what it should be.
Oh, Merna that’s really interesting. It’s been suggested, Lincoln was actually a victim of Marfan syndrome. I have never heard of Marfan syndrome, let alone that Lincoln suffered from it.
Q: What about English troops in Northern Ireland?
A: No, Judy, Northern Ireland is a very, very different situation. Northern Ireland, the troops were not keeping Northern Ireland down. They were dealing as Israel is dealing today with terrorists and it’s much more a situation like Israel is facing in Gaza than anything else. Moreover, the solution in Northern Ireland is very clear. It will join the South, but one of the problems is the South doesn’t want the North, but in the end, the demography, that is to say the more Catholics are breeding more in the North, and in the end they will have the majority and they will vote to join the South. And Britain will welcome that with open arms. Dublin will not. So it’s very, very similar or has similarities to Israel and Garza, not the example I was giving you about Scotland.
Q: Can you Ukraine be considered a civil war, says David?
A: No, it cannot. Oh, and that came out strongly. I didn’t quite mean it to come out quite as strongly that, no, I don’t think it can. Ukraine was independent in 1917 after the Russian Revolution. It’s quite different, it has a different history. Ukraine is not only made up of previous Russian empire parts, it’s made up of Austria-Hungarian parts, for example, in Galicia. So it’s, no, the answer is no, I wouldn’t consider it a civil war.
Clive asked the same question. No, I’m sorry, I really don’t. Lincoln suffered from clinical depression. Well, so did Churchill with his black dog moves. It raises questions about whether anyone carrying the weight of office that Lincoln did in the war and that Churchill did in the Second World War, maybe it’s bound to impact and cause, I don’t know, I’m not a psychiatrist.
In a Manchester park Platt Fields there’s a statue of Abraham Lincoln. The link to Manchester is strike by cotton workers in the 19th century. I know, I was a principal of the College of Adult Education in the 1970s. No, I’m sorry, 1980s in Manchester. I know Platt Fields well, I used to pass it on my way home and I know the statue well, that’s a nice memory you’ve given me, Jacqueline.
Shelly, oh, I did, I put the wrong date for Gettysburg, I’m sorry, I just misspoke that.
Q: Did you mention the little known story of the Rochdale mill workers who supported and all?
A: I didn’t, but I said the cotton industry support of the, sorry I’m, Carrie. I missed the start of your talk. Did you mention the little known story of the Rochdale Lancashire mill workers who supported the North in the American Civil War and refused to handle cotton picked by enslaved people? No, I didn’t. And Britain was divided over this war in the same way that in Britain there was a movement against using blood sugar. Blood sugar was sugar that had been harvested by slaves, and there was a move to create sugar out of beet sugar.
Gene says, my visit to Cologne echoed my experience with Gettysburg. My parents, says Donna, participated for years in the Civil War reenactments held at Gettysburg complete with period uniforms, dresses, and period canons. They also did different war reenactments at schools and library in Southern California with proper period canon and uniforms for each.
I have to say, Donna, although I’ve never participated in reenactments, I have to say I have a soft spot for them and like Americans, we also have a lot of reenactments. I get worried though, when people reenact World War II and some people come dressed as Nazis. That I’m not so happy about.
Q: Is there not a backlash in America against people dressing up in Southern uniforms?
A: Tell me, I don’t know.
No, Monique and Danny say the lessons American Civil War may not have been taught. They were taught at Sandhurst. That’s the point. But you say they were not because America was considered a more primitive place. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. It wasn’t anything like that. It was, they were taught, but no one seemed to understand the lessons to be drawn from it. Is it true Robert Lee was offered to commander both. Yes, definitely.
Oh, David, I believe the development of photography is due to its use in the Civil War. There was photography in the Crimean War 10 years before. Nicholas says he had 303s at school, the rifle of the Second World War. Well, I graduated onto that when I got older. Interesting about 303s, in World War II we didn’t have enough ammunition. Americans sent ammunition, but it was the wrong ammunition because it only fitted American rifles, not British rifles. In Australia too, each state has a different railway gauge.
Yeah, it’s all right, Barbara. I read it as gauge, anyhow.
Q: How did the South manage the last four years in the face of Northern superiority?
A: Determination not to lose. A general of the outstanding generalship of Lee and other generals and commanders in the South. I don’t think there’s anything surprising that that’s out and incompetent with the North until Grant.
Q: What happened to Jefferson Davis at the end of the war?
A: He simply went into retirement after he came out of prison after two years, and he died a free man in New Orleans about 20 odd years later.
Q: Why did the frontal attack, which cause so many casualties persist until World War I?
A: A good question. There’s no answer to that, David. That was what I suppose they would say, that’s what we always did. It’s only, and we did go on in World War I, not until World War I, that’s why we took so many casualties in the trenches because we went for all, it was only when we developed movements with tanks and infantry and artillery barrages, which Haig to his credit, developed, that we began to be able to advance against the German army.
Monty, “The Art of War” is an ancient Chinese treatise on war military strategy even used today by business leaders. Absolutely true. And the USA hasn’t learned its lesson about separating military and political appointments. We have a number of Congress holding up many military promotions because, and until the military stops paying travel expenses for soldiers who travel to get an abortion. I haven’t counted up the states in the North, Edwin, the number of states in the North doesn’t matter in one sense because the Western territories and states are with the North, it’s simply that the North has the population and the armament industry.
Q: Do I think it was only a group of disgruntled Southerners who were responsible for the assassination of President Lincoln?
A: Monique says, I think, Monique, you may be asking me something hidden in that question. Certainly Booth was a white supremacist, so yeah. I don’t know, you may be getting at something else that I haven’t followed you. Even today in the Southern US the causes of war is termed a matter of states rights, whereas in the North is taught as slavery being the cause. Absolutely, that’s why I’m saying.
Yes, Susan, I’m well aware that “Gone With The Wind” was a book first by Margaret Mitchell, but that didn’t have the impact. It was the film that had the impact. And all those beautiful, no, I can’t go down there, all those beautiful women, but no, no, no, no. I saw it when I was very, very young and it was, yeah. And it influenced people here as well as in the States.
Oh, Ronnie, that’s a good point. The Transpacific Railway to California was encouraged by Lincoln and completed in ‘69. Had it been functioning before the Civil War, the war may not have occurred. I’m not entirely sure I agree.
Q: Why would you not consider Obama a Black president?
A: Well, because he isn’t 100% Black with this slave background. That’s all, that’s all. If it had been someone like Martin Luther King, for example, just like a name, that would be different.
I love the discussion about what you do with heavy books.
Sheila, in '65, 19, yes. 1965, not the last year of the war. I travelled through Birmingham, Alabama. We met very hospitable white people who drove us round. They talked disparagingly about poor whites and even worse by they had a group of Black people. Our host said, Blacks have only been people for a hundred years, before that, they were a piece of machinery. Well, that’s true. And poor whites we shall look at as we go through next week and onwards.
Oh, Rene, I’m sorry. Rene says, very sadly, Red Alert sirens in Tel Aviv and Central Israel now. Well, God protect you, Rene, and all those with you. I’m going to end there. I don’t want to go on after that. It’s dreadful to think that as we’ve been speaking about a war of long ago, there are people suffering at this very moment that I’m speaking in Tel Aviv.
I’m going to stop there. Thanks to everyone who asked questions. If I’ve not answered your question or I’m not acknowledged your point, you can always email me and I will reply, but I don’t want to go on after that, it’s doesn’t seem proper. So I will say farewell and I will look forward to seeing you all. Well metaphorically seeing you next Monday, cheers.