CHAPTER EIGHT

The American Civil War

We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.

—Abraham Lincoln, July 1862

The war came and now it must go on till the last man of this generation falls in his tracks, and his children seize his musket and fight our battle.

—Jefferson Davis, July 1864

Will we ever awake from this hideous nightmare?

—Mary Lincoln, December 1863

THE CIVIL WAR IS THE SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT event in American history since the Revolutionary War. In December 1860, several Southern states seceded from the United States of America (the Union), aiming to avoid federal intrusion into state-recognized rights of whites to own individuals of African descent as slaves. These seceding states formed the Confederate States of America (CSA) in early 1861. Abraham Lincoln was elected president of the Union in November 1860, taking office the following March. During his presidential campaign he had reaffirmed the rights of southern states to allow their citizens to own slaves, although he vehemently denied the existence of any right to secede. The secession dispute escalated to violence in April 1861 when Southern forces attacked the Union’s Fort Sumter located in South Carolina, a slave state. Full-scale war soon broke out. The conflict raged for four years across much of the pre-secession United States, with major battles occurring as far north as Pennsylvania, as far south as Georgia, and as far west as Louisiana. More than 620,000 soldiers on both sides died (2 percent of the 1860 U.S. population) before the secession was ultimately crushed, the Union restored, and slavery banned under the thirteenth amendment to the U.S. constitution.

Although carefully pored over by historians, the Civil War has oddly been understudied by conflict scholars, perhaps because students of interstate war view it as a civil conflict, and students of civil conflict tend to focus on the post-1945 period. I examine it here to demonstrate that the theory developed in chapters 2 and 3 can apply to civil as well as international conflicts.¹ What were the determinants of war-termination dynamics during the conflict? Did information dynamics affect intrawar negotiations or the war’s outcome? Did commitment concerns have significant effects? Why did the war drag on for so long?

The Civil War is perhaps the strongest evidence in this book that information factors alone comprise an incomplete explanation of wartermination behavior. Despite the steady flow of information provided by four years of battlefield carnage, the two sides almost never budged from their war-termination offers. This intransigence was driven by commitment fears. The Union feared that southern states could not credibly commit to avoid making greater demands following a limited settlement, especially if such a settlement undermined Northern military power by requiring the revocation of the Emancipation Proclamation. Somewhat relatedly, the Union government in Washington was also concerned about the commitment credibility of Northern states within the Union, as permitting secession of the Southern states might encourage Northern states to secede, causing the entire Union to unravel.

Credible commitment fears played a more nuanced role in the South. The CSA strategy was to prevent Union absolute victory, namely the destruction of the Confederate Army and/or the Union occupation of the South, and impose high enough costs on the Union to force Lincoln to accept secession as the only way to stop the bloodshed. So, an important part of the CSA strategy involved information, namely the CSA ability to send credible signals about its military strength and its ability to inflict costs on the Union without itself suffering military exhaustion.

If information alone could explain CSA behavior, then we would observe the CSA making a range of war-termination offers throughout the war as the fortunes of war ebbed and flowed. These offers might range from CSA independence to the southern States returning to the Union but with constitutional guarantees of state slavery rights to a return to the Union and the abolition of slavery, and everything in between. However, commitment fears truncated the CSA bargaining space. The CSA was unwilling to accept any war-termination arrangement short of CSA independence because it feared that Northern politicians, especially radical Republicans, would renege on any moderate deal once the CSA government dissolved. Northern acceptance of CSA independence, after the CSA had demonstrated on the battlefield that Northern conquest of the CSA would be impossible or at least prohibitively costly, would be the only reasonable means of assuring that the Union would accept the sovereignty of southern states over matters such as slavery. The inability of the North to commit credibly to a moderate deal short of CSA sovereignty made that whole range of moderate options unacceptable to the CSA. CSA credible commitment fears forced the CSA to fight as long as the Union refused to accept CSA independence. Union credible commitment fears forced them to fight as long as the CSA insisted on independence. The resulting collision produced one of the world’s bloodiest wars in the century framed by Napoleon’s final defeat in 1815 and the outbreak of World War I in 1914.

BATTLES, INFORMATION, AND THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR

When the American Civil War broke out, there were significant differences in the two sides’ estimations of the relative balance of power. Each side entered the war expecting swift victory. In one sense, then, the war began under conditions consistent with an information-oriented view on the causes of conflict. Southerners forecast that the merchants of the north had no stomach for war. Former governor of Virginia Henry Wise boasted, “Let brave men advance with flint locks and old-fashioned bayonets, on the popinjays of Northern cities . . . and he would answer for it with his life, that [sic] the Yankees would break and run.” A North Carolinian put it more colorfully, “Just throw three or four shells among those blue-bellied Yankees and they’ll scatter like sheep.”² The North was similarly confident. Secretary of State William Seward thought war would be over in two short months, writing on war’s eve that “there would be no serious fighting after all; the South would collapse and everything be serenely adjusted.”³ Hundreds of (Union) Washingtonians eagerly brought picnic baskets and opera glasses to Manassas, Virginia to watch the Battle of Bull Run in July 1861, hoping to catch a glimpse of the excitement before it all ended.⁴

Some at the time saw the war from an information-oriented perspective. The two sides did not agree on who would win, and only fighting could resolve the disagreement. The future Postmaster General Montgomery Blair remarked in January 1861, “The real cause of our trouble arises from the notion generally entertained at the South that the men of the North are inferiors. . . . They will not submit, they say, to mere numbers made up of Mudsills, the factory people and shop keepers of North. . . . And it is my deliberate opinion that nothing will do so much to secure real and permanent fraternity between the Sections as a decisive defeat on this field. It will show the Southern people that they wholly mistake the quality of the men they are taught by demagogues to despise.”⁵ The two sides’ initial war aims were straightforward. The CSA demanded Union recognition of its independence, and the Union demanded the return of the CSA member states to the Union. Importantly, President Lincoln did not (initially) demand that Southern states abolish slavery as a condition of reentering the Union.

War initiation aside, was war-termination behavior during the Civil War strictly determined by information flows? Did the belligerents use combat outcomes to update their beliefs about the balance of power, and in turn change their war-termination offers accordingly? More specifically, did concessions generally follow combat defeats, and did raises in war-termination demands generally follow combat victories?

I present two separate empirical analyses of an information-only explanation of war termination in the Civil War, that combat outcomes affected war-termination offers. The first analysis uses more systematic data, combat outcomes for sixty-three battles across the war.⁶ Though, as discussed in chapter 4, there are real dangers in using battles in a more quantitative way, these dangers are reduced if the analysis is confined to a single war, and if the combat dynamic in that war can be captured by a focus on conventional battles (as opposed to a war dominated by guerrilla operations). Data on intrawar negotiations come from primary and secondary sources.⁷ The unit of analysis was a single month during the war. For each month, the independent variable, combat outcomes, was the total number of battle victories experienced by the Union minus its total number of battle defeats. Using casualty ratios is unfortunately impractical, as there are missing data on casualties on at least one side for many of the battles.⁸ The dependent variable is categorical. If there was no change in wartermination offers in a particular month, the variable was coded 0. If the Union demanded more as a condition of terminating the war, the variable was coded 1. If the Union demanded less as a condition of terminating the war, the variable was coded -1. An information approach, namely the information proposition from chapter 2, predicts that these two variables should be positively correlated, that as the Union does better in battle it should demand more, and as it does worse it should demand less.

Figure 8.1 presents these data graphically. The x axis is time (warmonths). The combat outcomes are shown on one line, and negotiating behavior on the other. Again, the information perspective would predict that these lines should move together, as combat success should cause the Union to demand more, and combat defeat should cause the Union to demand less. Instead, figure 8.1 shows that these lines do not move in tandem. Although there is substantial movement in combat outcomes, reflecting the many ebbs and flows of the war, there is almost no movement in negotiation behavior. Confederate diplomacy is not shown, but it would indicate an even flatter line, as the CSA made no concessions until it surrendered at war’s end.

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FIVE TURNING POINTS IN THE WAR

The preceding test has some limitations. The cited measures are crude proxies of combat outcomes.⁹ It may also be that the quantitative test is too demanding of the information proposition, essentially requiring one side or the other to change its war-termination offer after even minor battles. An easier test for the information proposition would be to focus on the critical turning points in the war. If the information proposition is correct, each side should be most likely to update its estimate of capabilities and change its war-termination offer after combat events recognized as more salient, when fortunes appeared to be at especially low or high tides.

The eminent Civil War historian James McPherson outlined four turning points in the war, to which one might add a fifth turning point of the war’s endgame. The five turning points include summer 1862, when CSA counteroffensives in Virginia and the West stopped what appeared to be a forthcoming Union victory; autumn 1862, when Union victories at Antietam and Perryville stopped a CSA invasion of the North and headed off possible European intervention for the CSA; summer/autumn 1863 when Union victories at Gettysburg, Vicksburg, and Chattanooga again seemed to mark a march to ultimate Union victory; summer 1864 when the Confederate victories increased war fatigue in the Union; and fall 1864–spring 1865 when the Union capture of Atlanta and the destruction of CSA General Jubal Early’s army in Virginia seemed finally to spell the doom of the CSA.¹⁰ Of these five turning points, there was a change in war-termination offers after only two, in autumn 1862 and in February 1865. Closer examination reveals that neither change in war-termination offers is consistent with the expectations of the information proposition, and that more generally war-termination behavior in the Civil War is not consistent with an information-only perspective on war termination.

Summer 1862: The Confederacy Persists and Attacks

The summer of 1862 saw many engagements between Union and CSA forces in Virginia in particular. The general pattern in June and July was not a long string of tactical victories for the CSA (although some did occur, such as at Malvern Hill). However, Union sentiment became increasingly gloomy, especially after the unsuccessful Peninsula campaign of May and June.¹¹ In August and early September, things grew worse with the CSA victory at the Second Battle of Bull Run. After hearing the bad news, Lincoln was so despondent he thought to himself that “we may as well stop fighting.”¹²

This string of military developments had three important strategic consequences. First, the Union failed to destroy the CSA army. This was critical, because the CSA could win its war aims of sovereignty merely by continuing to exist and maintain its ability to inflict costs on the Union army, whereas the Union needed to crush the CSA in order to accomplish its key war aim of restoring the Union.¹³ Second, and relatedly, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the war would not end quickly, and that the Union would require a new round of mobilization and recruitment for the longer haul. Third, Union forces retreated from Virginia back into Maryland, opening the door for a possible strategic CSA offensive. Indeed, the CSA crossed the Potomac River and invaded Maryland on September 4.¹⁴

The information proposition of chapter 2 might predict that the Union at this point would consider reducing its war aims, both because of a lowered estimate of its relative capability, and because of a raised estimate of the likely costs and duration of the war. However, although morale in the North was low, Lincoln never considered compromise or lowering Union war aims. Indeed, it was during this period that Lincoln first began to consider raising Union war aims, as he told his cabinet on July 22 of his general intention to announce the emancipation of the slaves.¹⁵ More generally, rather than cut back on Union war aims, Lincoln focused on trying to right the ship of the Army of the Potomac, dismissing the ineffectual General John Pope and giving sole command to General George McClellan, the Union’s great hope for victory and peace.¹⁶ As described in the following section, Lincoln’s commitment and other fears blocked him from considering any deal that would allow for secession, the core CSA demand.

Autumn 1862: Antietam

A second turning point in the war occurred later that year in September, when Union forces turned back the CSA invasion of Maryland at the battle of Antietam. The day of the battle, September 17, was the bloodiest single day of combat in American history, worse than D-Day or Pearl Harbor, killing some 6,000. It was soon followed by Lincoln’s announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation, decided on September 22, which would liberate slaves in all states in rebellion on January 1, 1863. The Proclamation was immediately recognized as an abrupt and important change in course. Lincoln had had his doubts about emancipation, both regarding whether emancipation was constitutional, and whether it would have political and military costs, perhaps sparking a backlash within the Union army and border states.¹⁷ Indeed, as recently as May 1862, Lincoln had revoked the order of a Union general freeing the slaves within Union control on a handful of islands off the coast of South Carolina.¹⁸ Although the Proclamation itself only applied to slave states and was strictly speaking an emergency war measure rather than something more enduring like a Congressional law or constitutional amendment, it was seen at the time (and later) as a fundamental change in the Union’s war aims and the war itself. Soon after the Proclamation was made public, high-level Union officials scoffed at the error the rebels had made, as if to say that had the Southern states remained in the Union peacefully they could have kept slaves for decades, but now the Proclamation made slavery a doomed institution.¹⁹

At first glance, this episode would seem to be evidence in favor of the information proposition. The Union enjoyed battlefield success at Antietam, and an increase in Union war aims, a change from the initial demand of allowing slavery to persist in the South to the new demand that Southern slaves be emancipated, soon followed. Indeed, Lincoln told his cabinet that he had made a vow to God that if the Union won at Antietam, he would free the slaves.²⁰

There are some problems with interpreting this episode as evidence favoring the proposition that new and favorable combat information provided by the Antietam outcome caused a reassessment of the balance of power and in turn an increase in war aims. Even though the outcome of Antietam was a strategic Union victory in that it turned back the CSA invasion of Maryland, Antietam was not a decisive tactical Union victory and did not reveal a substantial Union military advantage. Union victory came in the context of a nearly two-to-one numerical Union advantage over CSA forces, and the outcome was not a rout of the Confederate army.²¹ Casualties were even, with the Union suffering 11,657 killed or wounded and the CSA suffering 11,724 killed or wounded.²² Lincoln at the time was not terribly bullish about the future, nor was he terribly impressed with the performance of the Union Army. After Antietam, he told the cabinet of his desire to free the slaves, but cautioned, “I wish it were a better time. I wish that we were in a better condition. The action of the army against the rebels has not been quite what I should have best liked.”²³ Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles was also pessimistic about the course of the war, writing in his diary just after Antietam that, “A favorable termination of this terrible conflict seems more remote with every moment.”²⁴

In fact, the motivation of the Emancipation Proclamation was not a reflection of Lincoln’s new post-Antietam confidence in Union fighting abilities, but rather the opposite, his concerns about the future course of the war. Lincoln recognized that the war was far from won and that the Union suffered important military deficiencies. He hoped the Emancipation Proclamation would boost Union fighting power. Specifically, he hoped that the Proclamation would increase Union capabilities by encouraging Southern blacks to join the Union army and fight for their freedom. Liberal Republicans such as Senator Charles Sumner, Secretary of War Simon Cameron, and Secretary of the Treasury Salmon Chase had made this argument in a number of forms as early as July 1861, that the slaves should somehow be directly incorporated into the Union war effort.²⁵ The black abolitionist Frederick Douglass had long argued for the inclusion of blacks into the Union war effort, both as necessary for Union victory and as a critical step towards legitimizing black citizenship.²⁶

Although Lincoln rejected the idea in 1861, by the following year events had forced him to reconsider. In early spring 1862, he was encouraging slave states to embrace voluntary emancipation, recommending to Congress that the federal government offer financial aid to any state taking such an action.²⁷ As noted, in the summer of 1862, the Union suffered a string of battlefield disappointments, and in vain battlefield commanders (McClellan in particular) demanded more troops to defeat the enemy.²⁸ Sumner saw emancipation as being a solution, telling Lincoln on July 4, 1862 that, “You need more men, not only at the North, but at the South, in the rear of the rebels: you need the slaves.”²⁹

By late summer 1862, Lincoln was coming around to Sumner’s point of view. Lincoln began to see more clearly the shortcomings of the Union army when he reviewed Union troops at Harrison’s Landing in early July. He also saw that emancipation of the slaves would be one way to shift the balance of power, both because it might attract blacks to support the Union cause, and because it might make slaves less willing to support the Confederate war effort. Although slaves were not (yet) serving in the Confederate Army, Lincoln saw that their labor was put to great use by the CSA, as field laborers, domestic servants, attendants for Confederate armies, waiters, and as construction laborers building Confederate fortifications and entrenchments.³⁰ In addressing border state representatives on July 12, he urged them to support (gradual) emancipation not on the grounds that battlefield successes now allowed the Union to raise its war aims, but rather because emancipation would bring victory quicker. He told them that “if you all had voted for the resolution of gradual emancipation last March, the war would now be substantially ended. . . . How much better for you, and for your people, to take the step which, at once, shortens the war.”³¹ Later, in reflection, Lincoln explained that it was the general worsening of the Union’s military fortunes that summer that spurred him to embrace emancipation: “It had got to be midsummer 1862. Things had gone on from bad to worse, until I felt that we had reached the end of our rope on the plan of operations we had been pursuing; that we had about played our last card, and must change our tactics, or lose the game. I now determined upon the adoption of the emancipation policy.”³² Indeed, this was just the argument he made in a private informal conversation with two cabinet members on July 13, arguing, as Secretary Welles later recalled, that emancipation “was a military necessity, absolutely essential to the preservation of the Union. We must free the slaves or be ourselves subdued.”³³ He made the same argument to the entire cabinet on July 22.³⁴

Interestingly, the Emancipation Proclamation may have had a separate effect on the balance of military power during the American Civil War, aside from encouraging Southern blacks to fight for the Union. The CSA placed great faith on the possibility of European (especially British or French) intervention on their side, whether in the form of formal recognition, direct military assistance, or anything in between. By mid-1862, Britain in particular was en route to recognizing the CSA formally. However, the Proclamation served to stave off European aid to the CSA because of European queasiness about slavery. In particular, emancipation encouraged the British cabinet in October to reject a French proposal to intercede in favor of an armistice recognizing Southern independence.³⁵

Some, such as Blair and McClellan, feared that the Proclamation might undermine Union capability. They thought that emancipation might encourage border states to abandon the Union’s war effort. It might also undermine Union army morale, as perhaps some Union soldiers would not be motivated to fight and die to free the slaves. It might also thwart Union recruitment efforts.³⁶ Lincoln finessed the first problem by exempting border states and other areas from the Proclamation. The second and third problems turned out not to be significant, as soldiers enlisted and fought on regardless. Even McClellan, who deeply opposed the Proclamation, eventually fell into line.³⁷

His comment about his “vow to God” notwithstanding, Lincoln likely did not see the Proclamation as a declaration or reflection of Union military power. Although the Proclamation was an increase in war aims and came after a Union victory, Lincoln was to the contrary concerned that this action would be seen as a sign of weakness rather than strength. As Seward argued (to Lincoln’s agreement), “The depression of the public mind, consequent upon our repeated reverses, is so great that I fear the effect of so important a step [as Emancipation]. It may be viewed as the last measure of an exhausted government, a cry for help; the government stretching forth its hands to Ethiopia, instead of Ethiopia stretching forth her hands to the government.” Seward suggested that instead Lincoln should wait “until the eagle of victory takes his flight . . . [in order to] hang your proclamation about his neck.” Lincoln saw Seward’s point as that emancipation would be considered “our last shriek, on the retreat,” undertaken by a frantic government in its last throes. He feared that Emancipation would be seen by the Northern public as accepting an otherwise undesirable policy as a necessary evil to increase the Union’s military power.³⁸

Importantly, Lincoln’s gambit worked. Emancipation strengthened the ranks of the Union army, as both ex-slaves and Northern blacks became more eager to serve. In total, between 9 and 10 percent of all Union troops during the war were black.³⁹ In many engagements, African-American troops fought at least as well as if not better than white troops.⁴⁰ It also allowed the Union access to the (civilian) labor of some hundreds of thousands of fugitive slaves residing in the North.

Some might reply that the Emancipation Proclamation was driven more by Lincoln’s normative beliefs than by strategic considerations, as Lincoln freed the slaves not because of strategic advantages but simply because he thought it was the right thing to do. Although Lincoln certainly thought about the ethical dimensions of slavery, such factors were most likely not predominant in his emancipation decision-making. Indeed, he had been willing to accept slavery in the South from the time of his 1860 presidential campaign up through summer 1862. As discussed in the following, he also seemed to offer in February 1865 a retreat from emancipation if it might end the war. Perhaps most importantly, Lincoln himself around the time he decided for emancipation quite clearly framed it as a strategic decision to save the Union, and that he was motivated first and foremost by the imperative of saving the Union. He wrote on August 22, 1862 in an open letter to newspaperman Horace Greeley, “My paramount object in the struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”⁴¹

The boost in Union war aims via the Emancipation Proclamation was not caused by Lincoln’s newfound confidence in Union fighting capabilities following Antietam. To the contrary, Lincoln undertook this bold step because of his concerns about enduring Union military weakness. As for the CSA, it did not see the defeat at Antietam as a signal to lower its wartermination demands. At most, the leadership in Richmond was hopeful that CSA success would have encouraged Union concessions, whereas defeat meant the continuation of fighting.⁴²

Summer–Autumn 1863: Great Northern Victories

The Union enjoyed two great victories on July 4, 1863. In the west, General Ulysses S. Grant executed a brilliant campaign in Mississippi, culminating with the capture of the city of Vicksburg. Among other things, this success provided the Union control of the Mississippi river, cleaving the Confederacy in two. Grant perhaps immodestly claimed after the war that “the fate of the Confederacy was sealed when Vicksburg fell.” Others have agreed with this assessment. One historian declared that, “The capture of Vicksburg was the most important northern strategic victory of the war.” Lincoln recognized that the campaign proved Grant’s extraordinary abilities as a commander, a critical revelation given that perhaps the Union’s greatest weakness in the early years of war was the incompetent military leadership of generals such as Pope and McClellan.⁴³ Perhaps the more famous Union success on July 4 was at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, at which Union forces turned back the sole major Confederate incursion above the Mason–Dixon Line.⁴⁴

The Confederates in mid-July recognized the dark turn of their fortunes provided at Vicksburg and Gettysburg. Lee offered his resignation (it was refused). Southerners saw this as the (to that point) darkest day of the war. The Chief of Confederate Ordinance Josiah Gorgas wrote in his diary at the end of July that, “The Confederacy totters to its destruction.”⁴⁵

CSA fortunes improved marginally over the next several weeks. The Union failed to press the advantage sufficiently in Pennsylvania, and the remainder of Lee’s army escaped across the Potomac River to safety. However, in early September Union forces under General William Rosecrans captured Knoxville, the heart of union sentiment in east Tennessee, and Chattanooga, a critical Confederate rail center. Hope again dwindled in the Confederacy. CSA President Jefferson Davis wrote in his diary that he was “in the depths of gloom. . . . We are now in the darkest hour of our political existence.”⁴⁶ The CSA mounted a counterattack, enjoying a battle success near Chattanooga at Chickamauga. However, they failed to dislodge Union forces from Chattanooga itself, and eventually Confederate forces in the area retreated in a rout. By November, a dread for the future had returned to the CSA.⁴⁷

Both a domestic politics and information proposition would predict that at this stage the CSA should start making concessions in hopes of ending the war sooner rather than later, short of absolute defeat. As a domestic politics proposition might claim, the accumulation of casualties and a downturn in military fortunes helped advance propeace sentiments in the Confederacy in late 1863, culminating with some pro-peace candidates winning office in the CSA congressional elections of 1863. The CSA’s setbacks on the battlefield were coupled with the absence of any indication that assistance from Britain and France was imminent or likely.⁴⁸

But despite these political, military, and international events, Davis did not offer concessions to Lincoln to end the war, in contrast to the forecasts of the information and domestic politics propositions. Davis would not accept any terms requiring the dissolution of the CSA, and for him the CSA must convince the Union that it would continue to fight on and shed Northern blood until CSA independence was accepted. Only after Union military confidence had been dented could the CSA consider entering into talks; accepting negotiations before that point risked signaling CSA weakness to the Union. Davis’ thinking is revealed perhaps most clearly in a January 8, 1864 letter to North Carolina Governor Zebulon Vance, pursuant to the latter’s suggestion that the Confederacy negotiate. Davis remarked, “the purpose of the enemy [is] to refuse all terms to the South except absolute, unconditional subjugation or extermination. . . . To obtain the sole terms to which you or I could listen, this struggle must continue until the enemy is beaten out of his vain confidence in our subjugation. Then and not till then will it be possible to treat of peace. Till then all tender of terms to the enemy will be received as proof that we are ready for submission, and will encourage him in the atrocious warfare he is waging.”⁴⁹

Summer 1864: The Union Nears Exhaustion

Summer 1864 saw a new turn in the war, and the growth of pessimism in the Union. Grant launched a major offensive in Virginia on May 3, entering an area called the Wilderness. The fighting was extremely heavy. By mid-June, the Wilderness campaign left 65,000 Union troops killed, wounded, or missing, some 60 percent of the total casualties inflicted on the Army of the Potomac in the first three years of war.⁵⁰The CSA suffered heavy casualties as well, but the critical problem, again, was that the CSA army was not destroyed, since Lee at Cold Harbor and elsewhere stayed behind his defenses rather than engage openly. Grant failed to capture Petersburg. Sherman’s progress towards Atlanta was (at this point) slow. In July, to the surprise of the Union, CSA forces crossed the Potomac, entered Maryland, and marched on Washington, getting as far as the outer defenses at Fort Stevens. When Lincoln himself traveled to the fort to observe the action, he exposed himself to direct fire from CSA riflemen. The rebels were close enough that bullets flew past the President, striking a soldier nearby. Lincoln finally ducked when (future Supreme Court Justice) Captain Oliver Wendell Holmes yelled, “get down, you damn fool, before you get shot!”⁵¹

The relatively poor Union fortunes in 1864 became a serious domestic political problem for Lincoln. His concern was not so much that CSA forces would likely soon inflict decisive defeat on Union forces, but rather that defeatism amongst the Union public would spread, a growing concern given the impending November presidential elections. Lincoln knew his chances of losing the election were quite real. He told one officer that summer that, “I am going to be beaten, and unless some great change takes place badly beaten.”⁵² Although he won his party’s nomination, he faced the possibility of being defeated by the pro-negotiations Democratic nominee, Lincoln’s own former commander General McClellan. Henry Raymond, editor of The New York Times and chairman of the Republican National Committee, wrote Lincoln on August 22 of the rising tide of political opposition to Lincoln in the Union. “Two special causes are assigned to this great reaction in public sentiment, —the want of military successes, and the impression in some minds, the fear and suspicion in others, that we are not to have peace in any event under this administration until Slavery is abandoned. In some way or other the suspicion is widely diffused that we can have peace with Union if we would.”⁵³ By August, all, including Lincoln’s own political allies, were convinced that he would lose in November.⁵⁴ The venerable political kingmaker Thurlow Weed told Lincoln in early August “that his re-election was an impossibility.”⁵⁵

Lincoln did hold one card that might save his political career: reducing Union war aims to allow for the continuation of slavery in the South as a means to end the war. Some advocated this avenue as Lincoln’s only chance. Taking such an approach would have eliminated the principal political difference between himself and McClellan, as the latter advocated supporting negotiations although specifically rejecting the idea of peace at any price, that is, recognizing the sovereignty of the CSA.⁵⁶ This approach should have been attractive to Lincoln, as he had originally embraced emancipation purely strategically, and lowering his war aims in this manner would of course have allowed him to maintain his core value of saving the Union (assuming the CSA accepted his terms). Such a move would be consistent with the information proposition, as it would have been a reduction of war aims after battlefield setbacks. It would also be consistent with the domestic politics hypothesis, that the escalation of casualties in a democracy increases the likelihood the elected leader will offer concessions.

However, Lincoln rejected abandoning emancipation as a way to stop the war and save his presidency. Even facing declining military fortunes and growing domestic political threats, Lincoln refused to revoke the Emancipation Proclamation, because he believed it to be critical to Union military power. He feared that reversing the Proclamation would end the recruitment of blacks to the Union Army, and cause blacks currently serving the Union Army to desert.⁵⁷ A critic might speculate that even if revoking Emancipation undermined military power, this concern is irrelevant if such a move also ended the war, removing the (immediate) need for Union military power. However, Lincoln worried that such a concession would shift the balance of power and cause CSA states to insist on independence. In an August 19, 1864 meeting, Lincoln stated that, “There are now between 1 & 200 thousand black men now in the service of the Union. These men will be disbanded [if emancipation were repealed], returned to slavery & we will have to fight two nations instead of one. I have tried it. You cannot concilliate [sic] the South, when the mastery & control of millions of blacks makes them sure of ultimate success. You cannot concilliate [sic] the South, when you place yourself in such a position, that they see they can achieve their independence.” Such a strategy would “result in the dismemberment of the Union.”⁵⁸ In an August 17 letter to a Wisconsin War Democrat, he rejected the possibility of revoking Emancipation before the war had ended, that is, revoking Emancipation while fighting capability was still needed.⁵⁹

Lincoln held fast all summer. He reiterated his war-termination offer demanding both restoration of the Union and the end of slavery in a letter to CSA representatives on July 18, and in private discussion with cabinet members on August 24.⁶⁰ The closest he came to wavering on the slavery issue was when he penned an unsent letter on August 17 concluding, “If Jefferson Davis . . . wishes to know what I would do if he were to offer peace and re-union, saying nothing about slavery, let him try me.”⁶¹ Lincoln at this time rejected the idea of initiating peace talks with the CSA, even under the condition that the peace talks would require recognition of the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution. Lincoln saw such a tentative move, suggested by the Republican National Committee, as “worse than losing the [November 1864] Presidential contest—it would be ignominiously surrendering it in advance.”⁶² Indeed, Lincoln’s commitment to emancipation seemed if anything to be strengthening. At the Republication convention in Baltimore that summer, Lincoln insisted that the party’s 1864 presidential election platform include a plank calling for a constitutional amendment abolishing slavery, ensuring that emancipation would outlast the war and his presidency.⁶³ In contrast to the information proposition and a domestic politics approach, Lincoln refused to make concessions, even as the fortunes of both his political career and his nation’s military were sinking. Lincoln could not bear the loss of the black contribution to Union military power.

Winter 1864–65: The Confederacy Collapses

The war took a decisive and final turn in favor of the Union in the latter half of 1864. The CSA suffered a string of defeats, including the Union’s capture of Atlanta, General William Sherman’s devastating march across Georgia, and the fall of Fort Fisher in North Carolina, the last CSA seaport. The capture of Fort Fisher was especially crushing to CSA logistics and hopes, termed in hindsight by one former Confederate leader as “one of the greatest disasters which had befallen our Cause from the beginning of the war—not excepting the loss of Vicksburg or Atlanta.”⁶⁴ The reelection of Lincoln in November was also a heavy blow, as a McClellan victory would have given the CSA hope of a settlement conceding its independence. The information proposition would predict that at this point the CSA would start to consider reducing its war-termination offer, to extract concessions short of the absolute Union victory that appeared to impend.

And yet, the CSA made no concessions on its key issue, independence, even in the hopes of soliciting Union concessions on slavery. Davis had made this quite clear during some preliminary peace talks in July 1864, framing the key issue as “independence or subjugation,” and that “I shall at any time be pleased to receive proposals for peace on the basis of our independence. It will be useless to approach me with any other.”⁶⁵ Interestingly, the CSA might have been willing to entertain terms that included CSA independence and emancipation. Like Lincoln, Davis saw emancipation as linked to military power, as in late 1864 when Davis unsuccessfully offered to European governments emancipation of the slaves in the hopes of drawing European intervention into the war.⁶⁶ Davis also seemed to allow for the possibility of CSA independence with emancipation in the July 1864 talks, when he remarked that, “We are not fighting for slavery. We are fighting for independence, and that, or extermination, we will have.”⁶⁷

The window to war termination opened slightly with the break of the new year of 1865. In January, the Northern politician Francis Blair, Sr. traveled in a generally unofficial capacity—although with Lincoln’s consent—to Virginia with an unusual peace proposal for Davis. Blair proposed that the CSA and Union unite military forces for the purpose of invading Mexico, in reaction to French interference in Mexican politics, an ostensible violation of the Monroe Doctrine. Davis wrote a letter to Lincoln in response to Blair’s proposal that offered nothing but closed no doors. Importantly, he expressed an interest in convening a “conference with a view to secure peace to the two countries,” that is, a peace that would recognize Confederate independence.⁶⁸

Although Blair’s bizarre Mexico suggestion did not bear fruit, it lay the groundwork for further efforts. Soon after his visit, the Union and CSA agreed that CSA representatives would travel to the Union and have a peace parley with Lincoln himself in February at Hampton Roads. This was the only official peace negotiation of the war, and the willingness of Lincoln himself to meet with the CSA representatives offered a very real chance for the CSA to have a new war-termination offer taken seriously. During the negotiations, Lincoln quite surprisingly offered some concessions to the Confederates in return for the restoration of the Union, including reparations in the neighborhood of $400 million. Lincoln also may have opened the door to concession on the slavery issue. According to one participant in the meeting, Lincoln noted that the January 1863 Emancipation Proclamation was a “war measure,” and that in his opinion it would cease to be operative once the war ended, although he allowed that the courts might differ on this interpretation. During the meeting, Seward noted that the Thirteenth Amendment, which would abolish slavery, had received the necessary two-thirds vote in the House some days before (the Senate had given two-thirds approval in 1863). He gave the impression that if the CSA laid down its arms, then those former CSA states could return as recognized states in the Union, and as such could block the amendment, as the U.S. Constitution provides that any amendment receiving two-thirds approval by the Senate and House must then receive approval from at least three quarters of state legislatures. Any ten of the thirty-six states in the Union would be able to block the amendment, and the CSA included more than ten states. Lincoln also talked about the possibility of prospective ratification of the Amendment, perhaps taking effect in five years rather than immediately.⁶⁹

However, CSA President Davis refused to discuss any terms that included the restoration of the Union and the demise of the CSA. His instructions to his representatives at Hampton Roads indicated that they were authorized to speak with Lincoln with “the purpose of securing peace to the two countries.” Davis may have consented to doomed peace talks as a means of publicly highlighting the Northern demand for unconditional surrender, and demonstrating that the CSA’s back was against the wall, thereby inspiring the Southern public to fight on.⁷⁰ In other words, both Lincoln and Davis used war-termination diplomacy to increase military power, with Lincoln using emancipation to inspire blacks to fight for the Union, and Davis using failed peace talks to boost Southern morale.⁷¹

The information environment at the time makes Davis’ obstinacy puzzling. The CSA had endured a string of combat defeats, and its resources were low and dwindling. Union forces were advancing under the superior generalship of officers like Grant, Sheridan, and Sherman, having abandoned the chronically timid McClellan. Indeed, the war did end with the virtually unconditional surrender of the CSA some two months later at Appomattox, bringing with it the national abolition of slavery under the (ratified) Thirteenth Amendment. The information proposition would predict that Davis should have at least considered negotiating with Lincoln at Hampton Roads, perhaps at least attempting to extract more concessions, such as stronger guarantees of states’ rights over slavery or other issues, a commitment not to imprison CSA political or military leaders, or greater financial compensation. Instead, Davis rejected the peace opening, and attempted to reinvigorate the Southern war effort. One historian expressed the Hampton Roads puzzle as such: “Faced with almost certain defeat, anyhow, Confederates might come out of defeat with much better terms by negotiating now than if they continued on and forced the North to beat them into definitive subjugation when they no longer had anything, even surrender, with which to bargain.”⁷²

CREDIBLE COMMITMENTS

The Civil War presents a puzzle for an information-only perspective on war termination. Both more quantitative examination of the evidence and closer analysis of key turning points in the war reveal essentially no connection between combat outcomes and war-termination diplomacy, as defeats did not cause concessions, and victories generally did not encourage greater demands. Instead, each side clung to its core demands, the Union calling for restoration and the CSA calling for independence. Changes in the tides of war were not matched by changes in war-termination behavior. The sole exception might be the Emancipation Proclamation following the Union’s victory at Antietam which increased Union demands. However, closer examination of this episode reveals that the battle was not interpreted by Lincoln as evidence of Union military superiority, and the Proclamation was driven by concerns about Union military weakness rather than confidence in Union military strength.

The commitment proposition can help explain this lack of connection between combat outcomes and war-termination offers. On the Union side, Lincoln maintained great concern over what the future would hold if concessions were made to the CSA. That is, he doubted the credibility of a CSA commitment to adhere to a deal that included Union concessions. Before the war, commitment concerns colored Lincoln’s thinking. Specifically, in late 1860 several Congressmen floated the so-called Crittenden Compromise as a last ditch effort to avoid secession and war. It called for a series of constitutional amendments that would guarantee slavery in southern states. However, Lincoln was concerned that making this concession in response to a threat of secession would set a dangerous precedent, encouraging Southerners to wield the threat of secession again to renege on the terms of the Crittenden Compromise and extract more concessions. Certainly, the threat of secession was a familiar tool to Southerners. They had wielded it as a domestic political tool through the 1850s.⁷³ In December 1860, to a compromise-oriented Missouri newspaper editor, Lincoln described his take on the Crittenden Compromise: “I am not at liberty to shift my ground—that is out of the question. . . . The secessionists, per se believing they had alarmed me, would clamor all the louder.”⁷⁴ In a reply the following month to Congressman James Hale, one of the supporters of the Compromise, Lincoln noted that if this concession was made, “They will repeat the experiment upon us ad libitum. A year will not pass, till we shall have to take Cuba as a condition upon which they will stay in the Union.”⁷⁵ Many Southerners indeed looked to grow the slave empire. On the eve of the attack on Fort Sumter, a former governor of South Carolina declared, “Mexico and Cuba are ready, now, to fall into our hands, and before two years have passed, with or without the Border States, we shall count twenty millions. . . . Our territory will extend from the Atlantic to the Pacific, and as far south as the Isthmus. We are founding, sir, an empire that will be able to defy all Europe—one grander than the world has seen since the age of Pericles!”⁷⁶

Later, an additional commitment concern emerged. During the dark summer of 1864, some suggested to Lincoln that he consider conceding on slavery (although not CSA independence) in the hopes that this might make peace possible. For Lincoln, the problem was that making this concession would create a commitment problem, as it would cause blacks to abandon the Union cause, decisively swinging the military balance against the Union, and thereby allow the CSA to harden its bargaining position and pursue independence) through war. Lincoln wrote in an August 17, 1864 letter that if emancipation were repealed,

All recruiting of colored men would instantly cease, and all colored men now in our service, would instantly desert us. And rightfully too. Why should they give their lives for us, with full notice of our purpose to betray them? Drive back to the support of the rebellion the physical force which the colored people now give, and promise us, and neither the present, nor any coming administration, can save the Union. Take from us, and give to the enemy, the hundred and thirty, forty, or fifty thousand colored persons now serving us as soldiers, seamen, and laborers, and we can not longer maintain the contest.⁷⁷

That is, Lincoln was especially strongly motivated to stand by emancipation because this was a good the two sides were bargaining over that directly affected the military balance, as was the case for POWs in the Korean War and strategic territory in the wars between Finland and the Soviet Union.

There were also commitment concerns on the CSA side. At least part of Davis’ motivation not to concede on CSA independence, even in the dark days of early 1865, was worry over whether the North would adhere to a war-ending agreement. The war itself was caused in part by commitment concerns, as Southerners greatly feared and opposed the election of the Republican Lincoln, despite his many statements that he was not an abolitionist. Prior to the late 1850s, southern states had felt more assured that their slavery rights would not be threatened because of a balance in the Union between free and slave states, affording each side a veto in the Senate over highly contentious issues such as anti-slavery amendments to the constitution. The balance in the Senate gave the South a tool to enforce the verbal Northern commitment not to pursue abolition. This balance, and thereby the credibility of the North’s commitment, was perceived to be deeply threatened in 1858, when the Congress refused to admit Kansas as a slave state to balance the 1850 admission of California as a free state.⁷⁸

This fear became entrenched after the Emancipation Proclamation, seen by Southerners as a reversal of Lincoln’s prewar and wartime declarations that he would not free the slaves, and as vindication of Southern suspicions that earlier statements of moderation issued by Lincoln and the Union government could not be trusted. In his January 12, 1863 speech to the Confederate Congress, Davis declared that the Emancipation Proclamation “affords to our whole people the complete and crowning proof of the true nature of the designs of the party which elevated to power the present occupant of the Presidential chair at Washington and which sought to conceal its purpose by every variety of artful device and by the perfidious use of the most solemn and repeated pledges on every possible occasion.”⁷⁹

CSA commitment concerns were driven by observations about Union domestic politics, as well as doubts about Lincoln’s word. Union violations of civil liberties during the war moved Davis to doubt that the North could be trusted to respect individual freedoms in the South if the war ended with the abandonment of CSA sovereignty.⁸⁰ Even if Lincoln ultimately promised and genuinely intended moderate terms of peace settlement, Davis and the CSA feared that Northern Radicals might take over any reconstruction process and impose a very harsh set of peace terms on the South, pushing aside Lincoln’s past promises of moderation.⁸¹ Blair, on an unofficial mission from the Union, told Davis in January 1865 that “Mr. Lincoln did not sympathize with the radical men who desired the devastation and subjugation of the Southern States; but that he was unable to control the extreme party which now had great power in the Congress and would at the next session have still more.”⁸² James Gilmore, another peace emissary, had made a similar point to Lincoln some six months earlier.⁸³

Certainly, splits in Northern opinion about postwar reconstruction of the South emerged in the months following the Emancipation Proclamation. Lincoln’s relatively moderate Proclamation of Amnesty and Reconstruction issued on December 8, 1863 demonstrated the growing cleavages in the North. This policy allowed that a seceding state could reacquire its representation in Washington if 10 percent of its voting population made an oath of loyalty to the Union and agreed to accept emancipation, and if the state’s constitution was amended to abolish slavery. However, the new state constitution could enact temporary measures in the transition to abolition, and no requirements were declared that postslavery states make provisions for black suffrage or equality before the law.⁸⁴ Northern Radical Republicans soon criticized what became known as the Ten Percent Plan, in part because they feared its demands were too lenient, and would allow Southerners to renege on their war-ending commitments.

Other lightning rods for Union disagreement arose beyond the Ten Percent Plan. Northern radicals and others voiced growing concern about the emerging post-secession government in Louisiana. The new system seemed to be a disturbing example of a post-secession state offering insufficient protection of, and assistance to, blacks.⁸⁵ As Senator Jacob Howard declared in the Senate:

. . . we shall be acting a very childish and very foolish part to demand no other security from the leaders of the rebellion than a promise, on their already violated oath, that hereafter they will support the Constitution of the United States. Sir, I will never be wheedled and cheated in this way. . . . the people of the North are not such fools as to fight through such a war as this . . . and then turn around and say to the traitors, ‘All you have to do is to come back into the councils of the nation and take an oath that henceforth you will be true to the Government.’ Sir, it would be simple imbecility, folly; and for one I will never, whatever may be the cost or the consequences of this war, or however long it may continue, be consciously guilty of such weakness and such folly.⁸⁶

The Radicals offered an alternative in July 1864, the Wade–Davis Plan, which declared that Reconstruction in a state could not begin until a majority of white males pledged loyalty to the Union, required that only those who took the loyalty oath could vote on a post-slavery state constitution, and allowed for some guarantees of equality before the law for blacks. Lincoln vetoed the bill, although it enjoyed almost complete support from Republicans in Congress. Indeed, the extremely inflammatory Wade–Davis manifesto, published in August, sharply opposed Lincoln’s veto in the most extravagant terms, claiming among other things that Lincoln’s veto was motivated by a desire to hold the “electoral votes of the rebel States at the dictation of his personal ambition.” It included a thinly veiled threat: “If he wishes our support he must confine himself to his executive duties—to obey and to execute, not make the laws—to suppress by arms armed Rebellion, and leave political reorganization to Congress.”⁸⁷ That fall, after Lincoln’s presidential prospects improved dramatically following the capture of Atlanta, the radicals fell in line to support Lincoln’s reelection, with the ultimate aim to guide Lincoln’s war policies from within towards seeking abolition and more extreme war aims, rather than attack Lincoln’s perceived moderation from without.⁸⁸

More and more Radicals began to clamor for an even more ambitious Reconstruction, calling for black education, black suffrage, and land reform to give land to ex-slaves. An example of such actions included General William Sherman’s Special Field Order Number 15, which established the Georgia and southern South Carolina coastal areas as zones for black settlement, allowing that each black family in the region be granted forty acres of land and a mule.⁸⁹ The inability of Lincoln to commit to a moderate reconstruction in the context of these domestic political problems contributed to the failure of the February 1865 Hampton Roads Conference. One CSA attendee at the conference observed later that Lincoln and Seward seemed “terribly afraid of their constituents.”⁹⁰ Davis was so unconvinced of Lincoln’s abilities to implement moderate promises that he doubted the $400 million compensation pledge had ever been made at Hampton Roads (Davis did not personally attend the conference), griping that “nothing could be more absurd” than the compensation story since “it would have been idle if he had made it because he had no power to fulfil [sic] it.”⁹¹

Northerners recognized that CSA fear of Union commitment credibility was the key barrier to Confederate willingness to accept an end to their sovereignty as part of a war-ending deal. In summer 1864, Former Secretary of State Jeremiah Black mused on possible solutions that might both preserve the Union and alleviate CSA commitment fears: “[Self-government for the CSA] does not mean the separate nationality of the South. They are not opposed to the federal Government (using the word government in the sense of the Constitution and laws). . . . They struck for independence because it was the simplest and readiest means of saving the rights of the States from violation. . . . If they could now have some absolutely certain guarantee that the same end might be accomplished in the federal Union they are not so perverse as to fight an army of half a million and expose their country to desolation for a punctilio.”⁹² When Blair proposed his Mexico gambit to Davis in January 1865, he held out that driving France from Mexico might enable the annexation of Mexican territory, which would in turn restore the “Equipoise” of North and South.⁹³ Such a restoration of balance between slave and free states within the Union towards a pre–Civil War (or pre-1850) environment might satisfy the CSA states that its prerogatives would remain respected.

The Confederate fear of the Union expanding its war aims after war’s end proved to be Lincoln’s personal undoing. John Wilkes Booth interpreted a Lincoln speech on reconstruction given on April 11, 1865 as a move towards radical changes in the South. Booth told an associate after hearing the speech, “That means nigger citizenship. Now, by God, I’ll put him through. That is the last speech he will ever make.”⁹⁴ Booth made good on his oath, fatally shooting Lincoln at Ford’s Theater in Washington three days later, a week after Lee had surrendered his armies to Grant in the Virginia village of Appomattox Courthouse.

ALTERNATE EXPLANATIONS

Are there other possible explanations of war-termination behavior during the Civil War? Some have argued that reputation concerns can affect wartermination behavior during civil wars. Specifically, in civil wars, the national government may be concerned that making concessions to secessionists will give it a reputation for weakness among other substate groups, encouraging them to attempt secession, as well.⁹⁵ This is to some degree also a credible commitment problem, but the difference is that here the question is whether the commitment of the subnational units to stay in the country is credible, whereas the argument laid out in chapter 3 is about whether the commitment of the belligerent to adhere to the terms of the agreement is credible.

For the Union during the American Civil War, the problem was not exactly that each state or concentrated ethnic group would demand more autonomy, but rather that secession would undermine the core legal foundation of the Union, unraveling its entire political structure. The American constitution of 1787 allowed for a relatively weak federal government and comparatively powerful states, but importantly it made no provisions for secession. Taking the next step and permitting secession would undermine the viability of the Constitution, and perhaps cause more individual states to secede and abandon the Union. President James Buchanan, who left office just before the war began, expressed his concerns in December 1860 that if secession was deemed legitimate, the Union would become “a rope of sand,” and “our thirty-three States may resolve themselves into as many petty, jarring, and hostile republics. . . . By such a dread catastrophe the hopes of the friends of freedom throughout the world would be destroyed.”⁹⁶

This concern was an important part of Lincoln’s opposition to secession, the belief that acceptance of secession would destroy the Union. For him, secession was the “essence of anarchy.” Majoritarian rule must reject secession. The heart of the Union cause “is the necessity of proving that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose.”⁹⁷ Lincoln was also concerned about encouraging future secession attempts. In his message to Congress on July 4, 1861, he declared, “Again, if one State may secede, so may another. . . . If we now recognize this doctrine, by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do, if others choose to go, or to extort terms upon which they will promise to remain.”⁹⁸

A second alternative explanation for war-termination behavior concerns domestic politics. Of course, in some sense all aspects of the American Civil War are about domestic politics. A narrower cut is to examine how domestic political factors affected the war-termination offers of the two sides. There is the specific hypothesis that escalating casualties will erode popular support for a war, and, especially in belligerents with elected governments, push leaders to make concessions in the hope of ending the war.

Although casualties accumulated steadily and the tides of fortune shifted back and forth throughout the war, domestic politics were never a strong enough factor to affect war-termination demands. Lincoln supported the Emancipation Proclamation, despite his concerns about its lack of popularity in the North. Indeed, its announcement in the North encouraged the Democratic opposition, and may have led to some Republican losses in the 1862 midterm elections.⁹⁹

Probably the most critical phase was the summer of 1864. As noted, the Union’s war effort had stalled, and there was growing discontent in the north, culminating with the Democratic nomination of McClellan. During that summer, Lincoln expected to lose to McClellan in the coming election. All expected Lincoln’s defeat. Domestic politics would predict that Lincoln might have sought accommodation with the CSA as a means of undercutting the Democratic threat and improve his chances of remaining in office. The information proposition might make a similar prediction in particular given a string of recent Union military failures, including the CSA parrying the Union advance on Atlanta through June and July, an advance of CSA forces on Washington to within five miles of the White House in early July, a separate advance across the Mason–Dixon Line into Pennsylvania, and failure in the Union siege of Petersburg (including the infamous Battle of the Crater). The information proposition and a domestic politics interpretation intertwine, as illustrated by the statement of an editorial in one Democratic newspaper at the time: “If nothing else would impress upon the people the absolute necessity of stopping this war, its utter failure to accomplish any results would be sufficient.”¹⁰⁰

Yet, Lincoln would not budge. He refused to back down from his core demand of restoring the Union, even though doing so threatened to oust him from office. The President called in mid-July for an additional half million recruits, knowing that doing so would hurt his electoral chances.¹⁰¹ By his thinking, dominated by a view of the legal indivisibility of the Union, an armistice leading to likely acceptance of secession would doom the Union, so given his likely defeat and ouster from office in early 1865, his only course of action was to try to win a decisive victory and save the Union before McClellan took office and destroyed it. On August 23, he wrote a private letter conceding that “it seems exceedingly probable that this Administration will not be re-elected. Then it will be my duty to so co-operate with the President elect, as to save the Union between the election and the inauguration; as he will have secured his election on such ground that he can not possibly save it afterwards.” He planned to tell McClellan upon the latter’s victory: “Now let us together, you with your influence and I with all the executive power of the Government, try to save the country. You raise as many troops as you possibly can for this final trial, and I will devote all my energies to assisting and finishing the war.”¹⁰²

ENDING THE LONG NATIONAL NIGHTMARE

The bloody inferno of the American Civil War was fated to drag on until the Confederate Army was completely crushed or the Union cracked under the strain and flew apart. Neither side was willing to concede on the central issue of CSA independence. Lincoln feared that the South could not credibly commit not to make greater demands if the North caved to secession threats or granted secession. He also worried that secession could possibly lead to the very unraveling of the American political fabric. The CSA worried that the Union could not credibly commit to even a theoretically acceptable settlement that removed Southern sovereignty, both because of doubts that Lincoln would keep his word, and concerns that Northern Republicans would force Lincoln to renege on a moderate settlement and reconstruction plan. Each side went so far as to consider making concessions on the critical issue of slavery, although Lincoln’s concerns about the contribution that emancipation made to Northern military power made him generally hesitant to do so. In this conflict, the steady accumulation of casualties did not perform the informative function of teaching the two sides about the balance of power, pushing them, towards eventually reaching a war-ending settlement. Bloodshed had no silver lining of information in this war. It was simply a grotesque horror, fated to continue until one side collapsed.