Part V

Behind the Lines

In this part . . .

This part enables you to take a break from the demands of battle, just as the soldiers of the armies did in the months from January to May of 1863. It uses this pause to turn your eyes to the world beyond the generals and the battlefields, showing you, instead, the politicians, the common soldiers, the workers, slaves, free blacks, and women, all of whom helped in their own unique way to shape the conduct and outcome of the war.

Chapter 24

In This Chapter

Government by improvisation

The internal battle over states’ rights

Making war with almost nothing

Confederate nationalism

W ith the establishment of the Confederacy in 1861, many enthusiastic Southerners made two big assumptions: The North would not fight, and the people of the South were totally united. It became obvious very quickly that the first assumption was incorrect. The second incorrect assumption revealed itself a bit less obviously, but soon became an underlying theme in the story of the Confederacy.

As an anticipated short war became a long war of attrition and national survival, the Confederate government continued to expand its power in order to prosecute the war. Although the expansion of centralized power flew in the face of states’ rights doctrine and was met with very bitter opposition from state governors, the demands of war touched every home and family in the South. Everyone became a soldier in the struggle.

Jefferson Davis as President and War Leader

Jefferson Davis was born in Kentucky in 1808, a year before Lincoln, and about 100 miles from the man who would become his future opponent in war. The Davis family moved to the black belt cotton land of Mississippi and made their fortune. Davis went to West Point, graduating in 1828.

After serving on the frontier fighting American Indians, Davis left the army to manage his Mississippi plantation and serve in Congress. He led the First Mississippi Volunteers as a Colonel in the Mexican War and was wounded in the battle of Buena Vista. Davis became a senator on the strength of his war record, and President Franklin Pierce, a fellow war veteran and congressman, named him secretary of war in 1853. Davis proved himself an able administrator, engineering the Gadsden Purchase from Mexico to acquire land for the transcontinental railroad. From 1857 to 1860, he again served in the Senate, engaging in the fiery debates over Southern rights and slavery’s expansion. Although not a secessionist, he joined his state and waited to hold some position of high rank in the army. But he soon found that he had been chosen for much different work — the presidency of a new nation.

Aristocratic and intellectual, Davis took for granted that everyone agreed with him. As a result, he had a reputation for aloofness. Although certainly disposed to a degree of coldness when dealing with people, his physical condition also contributed to his inability to build rapport. Davis was nearly blind in one eye and crippled by a series of painful illnesses throughout his adult life that made sleep almost impossible. Given the pressures of the presidency and the burdens of a desperate war, it was no wonder Davis was often out of sorts. Nevertheless, he possessed a powerful will and deep belief in the cause of Southern independence.

From his first days in office, Davis suffered under a continuous barrage of personal attacks. One example will suffice. James L. Alcorn, a wealthy delta planter, called Davis a “miserable, stupid, one-eyed, dyspeptic, arrogant tyrant.” Despite such attacks, Davis saw the need to provide an example of personal leadership to the people. Davis traveled the South, speaking to crowds and addressing state legislatures, always urging unity and restoring a fighting faith in the cause. He inspired the South with his example of courage and energy. Although the personal attacks continued throughout the war, no one ever questioned that Davis was the best man to lead the Confederacy to independence.

Despite his experience as a senator and secretary of war, Davis, as president, was a poor administrator who was obsessed with details and loved meetings. His cabinet meetings often lasted four to five hours, with Davis continually digressing from the main business at hand. When the boss liked to hear himself talk, the typical result of these meetings was, in a word, nothing. Unfortunately for a politician, Davis was extremely sensitive to public opinion, and most sensitive to criticism of his choice of commanders and government officials.

Davis had a different approach, as a war leader, than Lincoln. Davis took his constitutional role as Commander in Chief far too literally. He tried to be both a General in Chief and chief executive. He had proven himself a competent combat leader, but he thought that experience made him a competent military strategist as well. This mindset made the temptation to meddle in military affairs irresistible. At the beginning of the war, Davis was often seen riding out toward the battlefield, trying to get a firsthand look at the action. He often quarreled bitterly with his commanders, especially Johnston and Beauregard, over war policy and direction. He also played favorites, protecting the unpopular Bragg and the less-than-capable Hood despite evidence that neither was suited for army-level command. Lee, closest to the capital and the most visible of all Confederate commanders, masterfully dealt with the president, combining a mixture of deference and directness that made for a very good partnership. Unlike his commanders in the Western Theater, Davis left Lee alone in the Eastern Theater.

Davis at West Point

Jefferson Davis almost did not graduate from West Point. He had been caught at a tavern drinking liquor — a serious breach of regulations. He was tried by court martial and found guilty. Normally a cadet would have been dismissed, but his record saved him. This close shave should have kept him on the straight and narrow, but it did not. Davis risked dismissal by returning to the tavern. During one visit, Davis jumped over a cliff in the dark and nearly killed himself to avoid being caught by an instructor checking on wayward cadets at the tavern. He also was involved in an eggnog party that got out of hand, leading to a number of cadets being dismissed. Again, Davis was lucky; he had been put on report and confined to quarters early on and avoided being lumped in with the rest of the rowdies. He also reportedly got in a fistfight with another cadet, Joseph E. Johnston, over a girl. Johnston and Davis would have other altercations in the future.

The New Confederate Government

From the very beginning of his presidency, Davis faced nearly impossible tasks. In February and March 1861, the Confederacy only existed on paper. Somehow the new government had to do everything all at once: pass laws to regulate trade and navigation, punish wrongdoers, create a workable postal system, find the money necessary to run the government, and assemble and sustain a creditable military force. The Constitution of the Confederate States of America varied more in tone than substance from the U.S. Constitution. Given the decade of wrangling (1850–1860) over the wording and intent of the constitution between North and South, it was not surprising that the South emphasized the power of co-equal states at the expense of the Federal government. While guaranteeing the right of an individual to his property, which of course included slaves, the Confederate government also took steps to limit the future growth of slavery. At the same time, the Confederate constitution made some variations that were intended to streamline the business of government at the Federal level. Among the most important revisions:

The president and vice president served a fixed six-year term. The president could not serve a consecutive term.

Congress could allow cabinet officers to participate in congressional debates (but they could not vote) on any issues related to their responsibilities.

The president could use the line item veto, selectively disapproving and approving appropriations in a single bill sent to him for his signature.

Congress could not fund internal improvements or provide any special protection to industry.

The protection of individual property (including slaves) was recognized and guaranteed with no restrictions within the states and territories of the Confederate States of America.

The expansion of slavery was intentionally limited. No new slaves from any country outside the United States could enter the Confederacy, and Congress could prohibit the importation of slaves from any state or territory not belonging to the Confederacy.

Handling political troubles: No political parties

At first glance, Davis seemed to have an advantage over Lincoln. He had no political parties to deal with. Lincoln was continually plagued by partisan politics between Republicans and Democrats in the North. But as strange as it may seem, Lincoln was actually better-off and was able to accomplish more than Davis. Even though no political parties existed at the founding of the United States, it became clear that to conduct the business of government, political interests must unite around a specific set of principles or ideas. In the American system of government, political parties become the means by which consensus and compromise can work to accomplish the day-to-day work of the nation. Without such organizations, the process of government quickly becomes every man for himself — exactly what happened in the Confederate Congress. As president, Davis had no political base of support to push his agenda through Congress and sponsor bills to become laws. With no political party identified as responsible for prosecuting the war, the president became the target for everyone’s frustrations. When not pointing fingers at Davis and his administration, the Confederate Congress wasted a great deal of time in chaos, each member shouting to be heard above the others. Needless to say, the record of the Confederate Congress is undistinguished.

Robert Toombs (1810–1885)

Toombs is an example of the political figures Jefferson Davis had to deal with, but he was also typical of many elite Southerners — vain, proud, yet devoted to the cause of Confederate independence. Before the war, Toombs served in the Georgia state legislature and represented his state in the U.S. Senate. As Southern states began to secede, Toombs resigned from the Senate to join Georgia. He concluded his announcement by defiantly responding, “Come and do it!” to those who called for war against the South. He was named to the provisional Confederate Congress and became the first secretary of state in 1861. Disappointed that he did not become president, he resigned after only five months and became a Brigadier General. His military record was less than brilliant, except for a day of glory at Antietam, where he and three regiments spent most of the day preventing Union General Ambrose Burnside and his four divisions from crossing Antietam Creek. Angry over lack of promotion, he resigned and later served as state Adjutant and Inspector General of the Georgia militia in 1864. Toombs was always critical of Davis. (In Georgia, attacking the president was a popular political pastime.) Fearful of imprisonment, he left the country for several years at the end of the war.

Unionist sentiment in the Confederacy

Not everybody is for war, especially when it is a civil war. There are too many personal loyalties and economic ties that cross sectional boundaries to have a total acceptance of war aims. The Border States, because of their unique location and the conflicting sympathies of their populations, simply stood aside in the conflict. As each Southern state voted itself out of the Union, a minority of individuals voted against secession. Most of these anti-secession or Unionist sympathizers were found in the Appalachian region of eastern Tennessee and western Virginia and the uphill country of Alabama and Arkansas. In these areas, there were almost no slave owners. These anti-secessionists and Union sympathizers believed that a small wealthy elite, who had nothing in common with their way of life, dominated the South. They believed that secession and war was the cause of the elite, and they wanted nothing to do with the Confederacy. Although most Unionists in the South passively accepted their situation, conscription led to open resistance in many areas. In some parts of the Confederacy, anyone trying to enforce the conscription law took his life in his own hands. Many Confederate deserters headed to southwest Virginia, east Tennessee, or northeast Georgia where they formed bands of marauders, completely outside the law. In Texas, the immigrant German population was very strongly anti-slavery and vigorously opposed the war. The counties in the mountains of Virginia were so strongly opposed to secession that they seceded from the seceded state of Virginia to form an entirely new state — West Virginia. In areas where the Union armies occupied former Confederate territory, military authorities sought out and relied upon Southerners of Unionist sentiment to assist them in establishing a civil-military government.

States’ rights and the governors

In addition to anti-secession and pro-Union sentiment, Davis had another problem to deal with. The South had staked its destiny on the principle of states’ rights. The Confederate constitution placed the states in a position of power over the central government. The encroachments of the central government had caused all the trouble in the first place, and many Southern state governors were glad to be rid of it. But the war created tensions between the Confederate government and the sovereign states. To prosecute the war, the government in Richmond imposed taxes on states and individuals, enacted conscription, and sought to expand its power by regulating the railroads and commerce to supply the armies in the field. Davis also suspended the writ of habeus corpus , an ancient and honored legal constraint that protected individuals against arbitrary government arrest. By suspending the writ, Davis imposed martial law wherever he considered it a military necessity. He did so in Norfolk, Virginia; Mobile, Alabama; and New Orleans at various times during the war. Generally speaking, those states that were least touched by war resisted the central government’s attempts to consolidate power. The congressmen and senators who most strongly supported Davis were from states that had been occupied by Union forces.

Joseph E. Brown of Georgia and Zebulon Vance of North Carolina led the fight against the growing power of the central government and became champions of states’ rights. Interestingly enough, Davis’s greatest opponent was his own vice president, Alexander Stephens. Here are their issues:

Joe Brown: Brown was as loyal to the Confederate cause as anyone, but, conditioned by years of opposing Yankee power, his first loyalty was to his state. Brown took the concept of states’ rights to its logical extreme — he sought to create a semi-independent nation within a nation. Georgia would have its own defense force, its own defense industries, and its own financial base to support its own defense. Brown’s interests were so focused on his state that he contemplated trying to negotiate a separate peace between Georgia, as a sovereign nation, and the United States when things started to go bad for the Confederacy. Throughout the war, Brown resisted the Confederacy’s conscription and taxation laws. At every opportunity, Brown publicly and vocally accused Davis of trying to destroy the states and rule the Confederacy as a tyrant.

Zeb Vance: Vance, like Brown, was a strong supporter of Southern independence, but he believed that the war should be fought at the state level in order to preserve the power of the states. He was very protective of North Carolina’s sovereign rights and attacked Davis unmercifully whenever he believed that the rights of North Carolina were threatened by any attempts to centralize power at the national level. Vance maintained vast warehouses of blankets, shoes, and uniforms that were never used. Intended for the use of North Carolina troops only, Vance refused on principle to release his stores to the Confederate government. See Figure 24-1.

Figure 24-1: Zeb Vance.

© Bettmann/CORBIS

Alexander Stephens: Stephens, a tiny, frail, dyspeptic man from Georgia, believed in states’ rights so much that he vigorously opposed Davis’s attempts to mobilize the nation for war, fearing that the independence of the states would be compromised. He became so angry with Davis that he left Richmond to live in Georgia, where he launched an unceasing verbal and written barrage against the government. He seemed completely blind to the fact that unless the South won the war, all the states’ rights talk in the world would mean nothing. See Figure 24-2.

Figure 24-2:Alexander Stephens.

© CORBIS

Financing the War

In 1861, like everything else, the Confederacy had to create a national finance system from nothing. The difficulties of raising money to fight the war created immediate financial problems that would soon prove to be insurmountable. The most easily negotiable means to purchase supplies was hard currency, in the form of gold and silver. But hard currency was hard to come by in the agrarian economy of the South. The wealth of the Confederacy was in land, slaves, and cotton, which are very hard to turn into cash money easily. People had little cash on hand to provide credit to the government or pay taxes, and most of the banks in America were in the North.

Like all governments, the Confederacy had three ways to finance government expenditures: taxes, loans, and paper money — in that order. Taxation brings in hard currency that can be used immediately without incurring any debt. Loans and bonds were essentially government IOUs, with the promise to pay the lender back with interest after a certain period. The least desirable way to pay for a war is to make your own money with a printing press. As long as people believe the piece of paper represents real money (hard currency) there’s no problem. If too much paper money goes in circulation, people will have less faith in ever being able to exchange it for hard currency, and its value drops. Too much paper leads to rising prices and inflation, meaning it takes more paper to buy anything of value. The Confederacy, like the Union, used all three methods of war finance. But the Confederacy was forced to rely primarily on paper money to pay for the war.

Confederate creative finance I: Bonds and taxes

Hard currency initially came from personal loans and money seized from the United States mint and customs house in New Orleans, but these reserves were quickly used up. To entice citizens to loan their hard currency to the government, Congress authorized the president to borrow $15 million in government bonds, payable in 10 years at 8 percent interest. To pay the interest on the bonds, exported cotton was subject to a special tax. This bond was popular, but it dried up the last of the large cash reserves in the South. Later, Confederate bonds were sold in exchange for produce — cotton, sugar tobacco, and rice — to support the armies. As the demands for money grew, bonds could be purchased with treasury notes, a fancy name for paper money.

The Confederate government did resort to taxation, but the results were never satisfactory. The government levied taxes on the value of slaves, luxuries, property, and merchandise. Although the real wealth of Confederacy lay in land or slaves, the government taxes on these holdings were almost inconsequential, partially because payment of these taxes required hard currency. Later, the government would allow citizens to pay their taxes in produce, called a tax-in-kind. Taxes on imports were limited because most congressmen believed that high tariffs were characteristic of a Yankee government. Unfortunately, the Confederate government had no means to collect the taxes it levied or enforce the laws it passed to punish tax cheaters. In true states’ rights fashion, the central government had to depend on the states to collect taxes that it levied. Not surprisingly, the states were less than helpful. Because of their power, state governments were allowed to pay Federal taxes for its citizens, which they promptly paid with their own nearly worthless state-issued bonds or paper currency, instead of hard currency. States were also borrowing money to pay Federal taxes. As a result, by 1863 the tax system had pretty much broken down.

Confederate creative finance II: Paper money

Because hard currency was so difficult to obtain, the Confederate government kept afloat on a sea of paper money, printing about $1.5 billion worth of treasury notes. These notes promised to pay the bearer hard currency two years after ratification of peace treaty between the Confederate States and the United States. Thus, Confederate money was never considered legal tender, like Union paper money was (or our own paper money is today). The value of Confederate money was backed not by gold or silver, but only by an individual’s faith in the future independence of the Confederacy. Whether the government liked it or not, the value of the currency was tied to its success on the battlefield. As long as the Confederacy won, the currency was solid; if the Confederacy failed, the currency lost value, and inflation was the result.

Inflation was the worst thing that could happen to a wartime economy. As prices rose and the paper money lost value, the only way the government could keep pace was to make more pretend money. With lots of paper money in circulation, both consumers and the government needed more paper to afford the same amount of goods. This led to panic purchasing — people rushed out to buy as much as they could that day because the same amount of money would buy less the next day. Such demands forced prices to rise even further and further depressed the value of the currency. Inflation was also fueled by widespread shortages of goods. Prices rose about 10 percent a month on average during the war. Every new currency issue from the government would cause prices to rise even more rapidly. In 1863 for example, $275 bought a barrel of flour; by the end of war, flour cost $1,000 a barrel. Bad money drove out the good. Coins disappeared — they were too valuable to spend. The economy was awash with counterfeit Confederate bills and state currency. Ironically, money was so badly needed that the government considered counterfeit notes valid currency if they were turned in and stamped. The inflation rate climbed rapidly out of control: 100 percent by early 1862, 700 percent in early 1863, 4,600 percent in late 1864, and 9,000 percent in 1865. At the end of the war, Confederate notes were only worth about 1.7 cents each.

The bottom line

As inflation drove the Southern economy into a tailspin, the armies began to feel the pinch as the government found it harder to purchase supplies. Food rations became less and less regular. Replacements for lost or worn-out equipment were no longer available. Day-to-day life behind the lines became very difficult for all but the very wealthy. Incomes could not keep pace as inflation and shortages drove prices ever higher. The Southern economy was reduced to a barter system. Union conquests of valuable farm and pasture land, wartime destruction, the widespread drought in 1862, and poor transportation led to severe food shortages throughout many sections of the South, causing enormous suffering. Hunger, and even starvation in some cases, was common in the last two years of the war. In 1863, there were food riots in Richmond, led by women desperate to alleviate their hunger and no longer able to afford bread for their families. The riot was serious enough that President Jefferson Davis met the women rioters in the streets with an armed militia and announced, with watch in hand, that he would order the troops to fire if they did not disperse within three minutes. Not willing to test the president’s patience, the crowd dispersed. To alleviate the suffering of the population, the Confederate government began what amounted to a social welfare system to provide public assistance to destitute widows and children. This system of welfare is another example of states’ rights being challenged by the growing power of the central government in Richmond.

Supplying Manpower for the War

Initially, both sides relied on volunteers to fill the ranks of the armies. After the first year of the war, however, the realities of soldiering and the heavy casualties tended to dampen the enthusiasm of potential new volunteers. In April 1862, the Confederacy passed the first conscription law , extending the one-year enlistment of those volunteers already in the army and calling up White men between the ages of 18 and 35 for military service. The Confederate government sent agents into counties all over the Southern states to enroll eligible men for conscription. After September 1862, the government extended the conscription age to 45; in February 1864, all men between the ages 17 and 50 were called into service.

Early in the war, there were numerous ways to avoid conscription. Those called upon to serve could hire a substitute, someone who volunteered to take the draftee’s place for a certain fee. (This practice was abolished December 1863.) Initially, schoolteachers responsible for at least 20 pupils, officers of state government, college professors, druggists, mail carriers, railroad employees, newspaper editors, workers in factories and mills, and other skilled workers involved in war production were exempt from conscription. In addition, overseers or owners of at least 20 slaves were declared exempt. Perhaps nothing the Confederate government ever did was as foolish as instituting the exemptions for slave owners and overseers, which became derisively known as the “Twenty Negro Law.” The only people in the South who owned 20 or more slaves were the very wealthy. It appeared that the government was using the common Southerner’s blood to save the carcass of the wealthy aristocrat. Many men refused military service, claiming it was a rich man’s war, but a poor man’s fight. State governors only added to the general resentment and resistance to the draft by attacking it as a serious violation of states’ rights. Some states had their own draft system (with their own very long list of exemptions) to supply replacements to local militia or state regiments. By February 1864 most exemptions had been abolished, and the 20-slave exemption was reduced to 15. Despite the general discontent with the system, most Southern men volunteered when faced with conscription. Conscription added as many as 300,000 men into the ranks.

Supplying Material for the War

The Confederacy, being a newly created government, had enough trouble just getting organized, let alone fight a war. As an agrarian economy, the South produced very little for itself in mills or factories. Instead, the Southern states traded cotton and tobacco for finished products from the factories of the North and Europe, primarily Great Britain. The South’s reliance on outsiders to produce everything from shoes and clothing to locomotives was a serious drawback for the Confederate war effort. One of the most fascinating and least-told stories of the Civil War is how the South equipped and supplied the hundreds of thousands of men who fought in the armies of the Confederacy.

Josiah Gorgas and his miracle

The Confederate chief of ordinance, the man responsible for outfitting armies with all their weapons and equipment, was from Pennsylvania. Josiah Gorgas had the unenviable task of providing arms, equipment, and ammunition to the widely scattered armies of the South. He proved to be a genius at creating an industrial base capable of supporting a nation at war out of almost nothing. Until the Confederacy established its own war industries, blockade running and Union arms captured on the battlefield provided the initial supply of equipment. At the onset of the war, Caleb Huse and Edward Anderson were sent to Great Britain as purchasing agents for the Confederate government. Using cotton to secure credit, they acquired 350,000 Enfield rifles. Purchasing agents from several Southern states procured another 150,000 Enfields.

However, the war could not be fought with purchased and captured supplies alone. Gorgas established arsenals in Richmond, Fayetteville, Augusta, Charleston, Columbia, Macon, Atlanta, and Selma to manufacture weapons. A U.S. arsenal seized in South Carolina produced 16,000 artillery shells, 3 million rifle cartridges, and 10,000 weapons. Foundries at Macon, Columbus, and Augusta made cannons. Augusta also had a powder mill. Tredegar Iron Works, a private factory in Richmond under government contract, made torpedoes, propeller shafts, plates for ironclads, cannons, naval guns, and machine parts. Building a weapons industry overnight was not Gorgas’s only challenge. There were no factories in the South capable of producing clothing or shoes either. Government factories in Richmond, Augusta, Columbus, and Atlanta were set up to meet the demand. Because of a shortage of leather, shoes were made of canvas with wooden soles. Gorgas also had to supply horses and mules for the army, but with the loss of Kentucky and Tennessee early in the war, horses and mules were increasingly hard to come by. By late 1864, about a quarter of all cavalrymen in the Confederate army were without horses, and there were no animals available to pull wagons and artillery. Nevertheless, Gorgas had established the means that allowed the Confederacy to be nearly self-sufficient in war production, despite the blockade. His contribution to the Southern war effort was inestimable.

Getting food to the soldiers

If it is true that an army travels on its stomach, then the most hated man in the ever-hungry Confederate armies had to be Lucius Northrop, the commissary, who had the thankless job of supplying food for the troops. Northrop was, indeed, the most hated man in the entire Confederate government. Personally difficult to deal with, Northrop enhanced his rancid reputation with his approach to an admittedly Herculean task. No one liked to deal with him; every army commander declared him incompetent, and the newspapers delighted in raking him over the coals. As inflation destroyed the purchasing power of Confederate money, Northrop ordered his purchasing agents to seize food. The outcry against Northrop’s high-handed and sometimes brutal methods was universal, but Jefferson Davis refused to dismiss him. Davis and Northrop had been friends before the war, and despite all evidence to the contrary, Davis stood by him.

Sadly for the men in the field, plenty of food was available, but transportation was completely inadequate. A combination of great distances, poor roads, inadequate rail lines, and insufficient rolling stock prevented regular deliveries to the troops in the field. When rations did arrive, the food was often spoiled because there were no means to preserve it. States’ rights also served to cripple supply efforts. Rail movement, so critical to the conduct of this war, was never coordinated on national scale. State and local rail companies refused to allow the Confederate government priority to move troops or supplies in their areas. This situation, plus the lack of replacements for rails, engines, and rolling stock worn out, damaged, or destroyed during the war led to a near breakdown of the transportation system. Even critical war production suffered from the lack of raw material deliveries. The Tredegar Ironworks, for example, had a yearly capacity of 24,000 tons of finished goods but never reached far beyond a third of its capacity because of insufficient deliveries of iron. The secretary of war was not given control of the movement of all troops and war supplies within the Confederacy until February 1865. By then it was far too late. When the armies of Lee and Johnston finally surrendered, their soldiers had plenty of ammunition with them — but they hadn’t eaten a decent meal in months.

How the South made due

Common salt and sugar became a luxury in the South after 1863. Sweet potatoes, rye, corn, and even acorns were parched and roasted to serve as a coffee substitute. With flour so expensive, acorns were ground into meal. The lack of cloth caused problems for everyone. Scarlett O’Hara’s use of draperies to make a dress in Gone With the Wind is not an exaggeration — even carpets were made into clothing. Because the Confederate government could not afford to clothe its soldiers in regulation uniforms, the troops most often wore homespun pants and a jacket dyed with juice from walnut or butternut hulls, creating a brownish-gray color known as butternut. Buttons were made of wood, horn, or bone. Wooden-soled shoes with leather or cloth uppers were common among those who preferred wearing them. Most went barefoot all summer. Dogwood or sweet gum twigs were used instead of toothbrushes. As paper became more scarce, newspapers were published on a paper substitute made of straw and cotton. Sometimes even wallpaper was used as newsprint.

The Confederate Naval War

As an agrarian economy, the Confederacy had to trade to survive. Confederate naval strategy centered on keeping the great ports of Southern commerce open to commercial shipping. These ports included Norfolk, Virginia; Wilmington, North Carolina; Charleston, South Carolina; Savannah, Georgia; Pensacola, Florida; Mobile, Alabama; New Orleans, Louisiana; and Galveston, Texas. The strategy was sound, but the Confederacy was at a serious disadvantage at the beginning of the war — it had no navy. But it did have a secretary of the navy, Stephen R. Mallory, who wrung everything he could out of the South’s capabilities to produce a significant, even sophisticated, naval force.

Struggling to build a navy

In the decade before the war, the South built about 20 percent of all U.S. ships. Most were built at Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, New Orleans, and Mobile. Outside of the Norfolk Naval Yard, though, few Southern shipyards were very large, and the South lacked the foundries, rolling mills, machinery, and skilled workers to manufacture steam engines and armor. Ordinance was another limiting factor; only Tredegar Ironworks could cast guns for warships. Although other foundries and ordnance centers were established, manpower shortages and the lack of iron limited production. The loss of Norfolk and New Orleans in 1862 was a crippling blow for the South’s naval production efforts. As the naval war became more of a river war after 1862, the Confederacy’s naval production yards were located in the interior of the South where they were well protected from Union attacks from the sea. The ironclad Arkansas was put together along the Yazoo River; another ironclad, the Albemarle , was built in a Georgia cornfield. These facilities also turned out small, well-armed, shallow-draft ships built of wood and protected with sheets of iron armor (thus, the term ironclad), whenever it was available. Transportation and supply problems continually hampered construction. Late in the war, as iron plate became almost nonexistent, some Confederate ships became “cottonclads,” using cotton bales to provide protection for the crew that was more psychological than anything else. The shortage of iron plate for armor, combined with the importance of controlling the rivers in the South led to the invention of underwater mines, which the Confederates called torpedoes. Torpedoes could cover stretches of water where there were no shore batteries or could be placed at difficult passages of the river. The half submerged mines would detonate when struck hard enough. Like modern mines, they were designed to explode below the unarmored waterline of ships. Some of these torpedoes were so sophisticated that they could be detonated electrically.

Blockade running

To those observing the war from afar, the Confederacy represented a bonanza for the daring investor. After 1861, the South’s tobacco and turpentine became scare commodities in Europe. As a result of the Union blockade and the rate of return for bringing such goods to the markets in Europe, an individual could become rich overnight. The law of supply and demand gave birth to a fleet of mostly British blockade-runners with captains and crews who would have made Sir Francis Drake proud. The Bahamas, Bermuda, and Havana became the haunts of these ships, which used stealth, speed, and deception to slip past the Union ships on patrol. Bold captains used false lantern signals, flew other national flags (including the U.S. flag), and changed the nameplates of their ships to fool the Union naval patrols. They became the lifeline of the Confederacy, exchanging weapons, material, medicines, and luxury goods for raw materials. Although the volume of supplies never seemed to be enough for the South, especially as the war went on, the blockade runners provided critical support to the war effort.

Confederate sea raiders

Liverpool, England — not the Southern states — became the birthplace of the seagoing Confederate navy. British shipbuilders, in cooperation with Confederate agents in England, constructed warships disguised as merchant ships. The Florida, along with other ships, the Shenandoah, the Tallahassee, and the Georgia, all contributed to a destruction of the Union merchant fleet that was so complete that the fleet did not recover fully until World War I. But the most famous Confederate ship was the Alabama; her captain, Raphael Semmes, became the Confederacy’s naval hero. For two years, Semmes and his mostly European crew tracked down Yankee ships all over the world. In June 1864, he met a Union warship, the Kearsarge, outside of Cherbourg harbor and lost his only naval engagement. A friendly British yacht rescued most of the Alabama’s crew, including Semmes.

Struggling with Diplomacy: European Recognition

The war forced the United States to deal carefully with the two dominant powers of Europe, England and France. Both the Union and the Confederacy knew that the war could be won in Europe. The name of the game was simple — recognition. In the business of international diplomacy, sovereign states recognized the legal status of other states. The Confederate States of America sought to prove to the sovereign nations of the world that it had a right to exist as an independent state. At the same time, the United States of America sought to prove to the sovereign nations of the world that the Confederacy had no right to exist. Intervention — European nations providing military support to the Confederacy to ensure its independence through force of arms — could come with recognition. Either one spelled defeat for the Union. To make matters worse, it was clear that the Confederacy had strong supporters in the ruling classes in both countries. Their influence at the centers of power made the threat of European intervention very real. For their part, the European governments were uninterested in the survival of the Union. The growing power of the Unites States in the Western hemisphere was troubling. If the United States became two nations, the rulers of Europe’s two largest empires certainly would gain some long-term advantages. The one potential stumbling block to recognition was the Confederacy’s support of slavery, a very unpopular notion among the European working classes. Despite its unpopularity, slavery, at first, was not an issue in the war. As the war began, President Lincoln had explicitly declared that his goal was to save the Union. This gave the Europeans something of a diplomatic fig leaf, allowing them to ignore the domestically unpopular slavery issue and still support the Confederacy.

The shoe on the other foot

In the case of the Trent, the British government was quite angry that a U.S. warship had stopped a neutral vessel and seized passengers, in direct violation of international law. But just 50 years earlier, British warships had stopped neutral American ships to seize passengers believed to be British citizens. These insulting and illegal acts led the new United States government to declare war on Britain, resulting in the War of 1812. Now in 1861, the tables were turned, and the British got a taste of their own medicine from Captain Wilkes. They didn’t like it any more than the Americans had. The British and Americans thus switched roles from the 1812 crisis — nothing unusual in the game of diplomacy.

The blockade

Part of the diplomatic wrangle over recognition involved the legal status of the Union blockade of the ports from Virginia to the Gulf of Mexico, which President Lincoln had declared in 1861. International law only recognized effective blockades, meaning that the president just could not declare a blockade without having the actual military means to enforce it. After the blockade declaration, both Britain and France declared neutrality but at the same time allowed the Confederacy access to their ports. This gave the South the international legal status of a belligerent, indicating that the Confederacy had a legitimate cause to engage in war. Using this status, the Confederacy pressed the blockade issue hard. It was only a paper blockade they argued, and no nation should respect it. This meant that if U.S. warships stopped British or French ships from entering Southern ports, they were guilty of a hostile act that could lead to war. Of course, war between the United States and any European power ensured the independence of the Confederacy.

Jefferson Davis appointed two distinguished Southerners, James M. Mason of Virginia and John Slidell of Louisiana, as commissioners to court the French and British. In October 1861, the two men left from Charleston on a blockade runner headed for Havana, Cuba, where they boarded the British mail steamer Trent preparing to depart for England. Upon arrival in England, Mason would take up his duties there, while Slidell continued on to France.

The USS San Jacinto , commanded by Captain Charles Wilkes, arrived in Cuba looking for Confederate raiders when Wilkes heard that Mason and Slidell were preparing to leave. He intercepted the Trent , fired warning shots, boarded her, and took the Confederate commissioners prisoner. Wilkes brought them back to the United States where they were held in a fort in Boston harbor. His act of derring-do made Wilkes a national hero. But no one in Great Britain was amused. Wilkes had violated just about every rule of international law and insulted the British flag. No one treated the world’s only superpower that way — the United States had to be put in its place. The British fleet was made ready for war, and a message was dispatched to the United States demanding an apology and the release of Mason and Slidell. To make sure the Lincoln administration got the point, 11,000 British regulars were sent en route to Canada.

The British demands inflamed public opinion in favor of war. The two imprisoned Confederate commissioners were prizes not to be given up easily. Besides, if there was one group that some Yankees hated more than rebellious Southerners, it was the British. But Lincoln had no interest in fighting two wars at once. Mason and Slidell were released along with the necessary apology. The American minister in London, Charles Francis Adams, and the British minister in Washington, Lord Lyons, worked to keep theTrent affair from becoming the cause of a war, by ensuring that both sides could retreat with honor intact.

The decisive year of recognition: 1862

Applying the King Cotton strategy, the South sought to force the issue of recognition by enacting a self-imposed voluntary embargo on cotton exported to Europe. The goal was to starve the French and British economies of the precious raw material that drove their major industries to the point that they had to recognize the Confederacy or face economic collapse. This approach left thousands of English textile workers unemployed and, along with the series of Confederate battlefield victories throughout the summer of 1862, provided the British with an incentive to end the war. The British government contemplated extending an offer to mediate the conflict to end the hostilities. If the Union refused to accept mediation, Britain would recognize the Confederacy and ensure victory for the South. Napoleon III, Emperor of France, talked with Slidell about having France, Great Britain, and Russia cooperate to halt the war for six months. Again, if the North rejected the idea, the European powers could recognize the Confederacy or intervene militarily on her behalf. All that was necessary was a decisive Confederate victory on Union territory. With Lee in Maryland and Bragg in Kentucky, that victory seemed very close. But the battles of Perryville and Antietam, though indecisive, resulted in the withdrawal of the invading Confederate forces. The various mediation and recognition proposals vanished overnight. But of far greater significance for the Confederacy’s future was the issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation. After January 1, 1863, all slaves held in a state or a part of a state that was in rebellion were declared free. More a statement of intent than a legal order, the proclamation served its purpose. It changed the strategic direction and purpose of the war and eliminated the fig leaf the Europeans had been hiding behind. The United States was fighting now for both union and human freedom. Intervention in favor of the Confederacy would mean fighting against these ideals — something no government could afford to do.

Diplomatic highlights with Britain, France, and Russia

Although official recognition was not forthcoming, the British government turned a blind eye to clear violations of neutrality by allowing ships intended for the Confederate navy to be built in British shipyards. These ships included fast cruisers to attack Union merchant ships on the open seas and ironclad rams, intended to destroy the blockade, secretly paid for by the Confederate government. The legal argument was that the cruisers, like the famous Alabama , were merchant ships, even though they were built for speed and maneuverability like a warship. The ships ran up the Confederate flag and mounted cannons only after they entered international waters. The British government, therefore, had no legal ground to prevent their construction and delivery. The rams were clearly warships, but the British explained that they were being built for the French. It was no secret, however, that they would be delivered to the Confederacy. Under heavy Union diplomatic pressure in 1863, the British government finally made sure that the rams would join the British, not the Confederate, navy.

Napoleon III’s government was actually more sympathetic to the Confederacy than the British. An independent South would further his ambitions for France, but he was reluctant to take any action without British support, which was not forthcoming after 1862. Taking advantage of the war’s distraction for the United States, Napoleon flaunted the Monroe Doctrine and created a French dominated client state in Mexico. The French never had complete control in Mexico, and this prevented Napoleon from providing direct assistance to the Confederacy through Texas and Louisiana. Confederate diplomatic attempts to influence the French-supplied Emperor Maximilian in Mexico to aid them in gaining French recognition of the Confederacy failed. In June 1863, Confederate supporters in Britain, with the strong backing of the French Emperor, openly debated the issue of recognition in Parliament, but the twin Union victories at Vicksburg and Gettysburg gave opponents to recognition the ammunition they needed to table the proposal. In 1865, the Confederacy sent Mason and Slidell out for one last meeting with the French and British, offering emancipation of all slaves in the Confederacy in return for recognition and survival. By this time, the war was all but over; the South’s last card had been played too late.

Interestingly enough, the one nation that wholly supported the Union was the one that had just freed an entire class of people from bondage. In 1861, the Russian tsar granted freedom to millions of peasants (called serfs), who had been bound to the land and owned by the nobility for centuries. In the fall of 1863, two Russian fleets entered New York and San Francisco harbors to spend the winter. Although the Northern press made much of the visit as a counterbalance to the pro-Confederate leanings of the British and French, and the Republican administration welcomed the fleet as a powerful expression of support, the Russian government had other objectives for the arrival of the Russian fleets in America. Russia feared the possibility of war with Britain and France, and as a precautionary measure, needed warm-water winter ports to ensure that the fleets were available for offensive action if war did break out.

Assessing Confederate diplomacy

The Confederacy displayed a stunning naiveté when preparing their diplomatic strategy. Assuming that the world could not live without Southern cotton, the Confederacy wasted valuable time waiting for the world to come to them. They made a serious, and fatal, miscalculation. Great Britain, the target of this King Cotton diplomacy, had nearly two years of raw cotton stored in warehouses before the war began. The economy was not significantly affected until 1862 — only after the Confederacy had decided to abandon its cotton embargo strategy in order to purchase supplies and obtain hard currency through cotton sales. But by that time the blockade had tightened, limiting how much cotton could reach Europe. Increased cotton imports from Egypt and India eased shortages and decreased Britain’s reliance on Southern cotton. In addition, Britain was reaping enormous profits by supplying both North and South. Another unforeseen economic factor shaped the diplomatic battle. Europe had experienced several years of poor grain harvests, which the great farms of the North easily made up. Thousands of tons of grain were exported to Great Britain alone. This had an important effect on diplomacy. Simply put, Great Britain needed Northern wheat more than Southern cotton. Thus, her neutrality was ensured by the need to maintain a steady supply of food. Over time, Union military power became a serious instrument of diplomacy, and with Canada vulnerable to a possible U.S. invasion, Britain was careful not to push the United States too far.

In the end, the South’s attempts to gain full recognition were crippled by its shortsighted and unrealistic reliance on the King Cotton strategy and the failure to recognize, until too late, the burden that slavery placed on its claim as a great nation. Northern diplomatic efforts were highly effective in redefining the Union’s strategic goals and using the moral power of freedom to assure European neutrality. In addition, the Union used its burgeoning economic and military power to keep the ambitious European powers at bay and ensure their support of U.S. diplomatic objectives. The often-overlooked diplomats decisively shaped the direction of the war. Their successes, as well as their failures, ensured that only Americans themselves would determine the final outcome of the American Civil War.

Creating a Nation: Confederate Nationalism

Despite the daunting challenges, those who chose to create a new nation had succeeded. The South had perfected the old Constitution, making it more closely reflect the original intent of the Founding Fathers. Even by 1862, the Confederate States of America had become recognizable as a new nation; it had, it seemed, a sense of destiny within itself. In Great Britain, the future prime minister William E. Gladstone made a speech in 1862 in which he remarked that despite its attachment to slavery, “there is no doubt that Jefferson Davis and other leaders of the South have made an army; they are making, it appears, a navy; and they have made what is more than either — they have made a nation.” Creating a nation, especially in war, requires sacrifice; and Southerners, undoubtedly, did sacrifice. Throughout the war, they displayed patriotism and selflessness that transcended social class, and maintained faith in a cause that they believed God had blessed and ordained. In the end, independence became more important to Southerners than the Southern way of life. By 1865, the Confederacy sacrificed both the sacred cows of states’ rights and slavery for national survival. Even in the midst of total destruction and defeat, the South did not give up easily or willingly.