Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War & Reconstruction by Allen Guelzo (self help books to read TXT) 📕

was a Virginian who might have been presumed to know) and Southern Unionists would be able to seize control of their state governments again.24

Scott’s cautious approach to waging war, however, was overwhelmed in the outpouring of aggressive chest-thumping from Congress and the Northern newspapers, which were already demanding an immediate offensive on Richmond. Even Lincoln was anxious that some kind of demonstration be made in western Virginia and eastern Tennessee, where he believed that Southern Unionists would happily rally to the old flag. Scott reluctantly authorized the 35,000 volunteers who encamped around Washington to prepare for an offensive into Virginia, and put them under the command of one of his staff officers, Irvin McDowell.

Across the Potomac, and across the Ohio, the Confederate forces were enduring similar confusions. The Confederacy had as one advantage the fact that its president, Jefferson Davis, was a West Point graduate and had served with distinction as an officer in the Mexican War and as secretary of war under Franklin Pierce. As such, Davis had the immediate advantage of being a military man with substantial military experience. In addition to Davis, 296 Southern officers serving in the United States Army (almost a quarter of the officer corps) resigned their commissions, and most returned to the South to offer their services to their respective state governments. Of the West Pointers, more than half resigned to join the Confederacy, and the bulk of those were the younger, up-and-coming officers.25 Although a few Southerners remained with the Federal army, most of them did not, including the one officer whom Winfield Scott had set his heart upon as a possible successor as general in chief, Robert E. Lee, and the most admired and widely respected soldier in the U.S. Army, Albert Sidney Johnston.

Apart from these advantages, the Confederacy encountered the same organizational problems as the Federal army, and worse. The Confederate constitution permitted the Confederate Congress to raise and maintain armies, but its precise provisions made it clear that the Confederate government was expected to use the state militia as it existed rather than organizing a regular army of its own. Hence the Confederacy created its Provisional Army of the Confederate States exclusively by appeal to the states to supply regiments of state volunteers, like their Northern counterparts. Only the general organization of these forces, and the commission of general officers, was kept in the hands of the Confederate government. Unlike the Federal volunteers, who were initially enlisted for two- or three-year terms, the Confederate volunteers were enlisted for only a single year (Jefferson Davis would have preferred to enlist all Confederate volunteers for the duration of the war, but in 1861 there was no hope of talking the Confederate Congress into such a measure).

Arming and equipping the new Provisional Army was another matter. In terms of men, money, and resources, the Confederacy was dwarfed by the North. The Confederacy possessed eighty-one establishments capable of turning out bar, sheet, and railroad iron in 1861, but most were small-scale and located in the vulnerable upper reaches of the Confederacy; of the ten rolling mills (for iron plate) in the Confederacy, only the Tredegar Iron Works in Richmond possessed a steam hammer for large-scale foundry work. The military-age male population of the Southern states was outnumbered five to two by that of the North, and the Confederate government was so lacking in the means to uniform and arm its new recruits that Confederate soldiers turned out in even more different varieties, styles, and colors of uniforms than their Federal counterparts. Alabama volunteers were issued dark blue frock coats and gray pants in March 1861; the 5th Georgia wore so many different styles of uniform (including a regulation navy blue U.S. Army frock coat) that they were mocked as the “Pound-Cake Regiment,” while the 3rd Georgia featured a mix of red jackets and blue pants; the Louisiana “Tigers” sported brown jackets, red fezzes, and blue-and-cream-striped pantaloons; and so many Louisiana volunteers were issued blue uniforms in 1861 that the Louisianans were forced to wear red armbands to avoid being mistaken for Federal troops.26

Feeding the new Confederate army was an even greater problem for the state and Confederate commissaries. Private George Asbury Bruton of the 19th Louisiana found that “the first few days that we were here” at Camp Moore, Louisiana, “they fed us well,” but within a few weeks the Confederate supply system broke down, and “now they feed us on old poor beef and Cast Iron pies.” Armament posed some of the most serious problems of all. The Confederacy was able to provide modern rifles for only about 10 percent of its soldiers, while the rest were forced to bring “country rifles,” shotguns, and even handguns from their own homes. The Virginia state arsenal at Richmond was the only facility in the South equipped to manufacture small arms, and even then it had capacity only for turning out about 1,000 rifles a month.27

Even if weapons and uniforms had been in generous supply, the Confederate states had less than one-third the total railroad mileage of the Northern states for moving those supplies where they were needed. Only two complete railroad systems connected Richmond with the Mississippi River. One of these was the Memphis & Charleston, which originated in Memphis, picked up connector lines through Chattanooga and up the Piedmont to the Orange & Alexandria Railroad, and then made its way to Richmond over the Richmond & Danville Railroad. The other major lateral rail line, the Memphis & Ohio, connected Memphis with Bowling Green and Louisville, then hooked onto two other connector lines to arrive in Chattanooga, but since Kentucky remained undecided about joining the Confederacy, the usefulness of the Memphis & Ohio was in some question. That left only the Mississippi Southern line as a possible alternative. But the Mississippi Southern stopped at Mobile Bay, forcing passengers and freight to ferry across the bay, and only then picked up a trunk line north to Chattanooga and to the connector lines that linked Mobile