Me, I’m still waiting for the South to apologize. Yes, it’s a lot of fun for history buffs to attend Civil War re-enactments. A lot of time, effort, and money go into them, no doubt. It’s a great way to learn history, especially military strategies!
One can almost hear the din and chaos of those real but long ago battles where thousands of soldiers prepared to attack across broad fields or came out of forest ambush to try and slay the enemy. The high numbers of men wounded or killed from a single battle make the head reel—thousands of men gone, forever, in a single day.
While there were frequent skirmishes, even battles, between Native Americans and European-Americans for nearly 250 years prior to the Civil War, the number of dead lost on either side was typically not very great—although on occasion the numbers rose into the hundreds.
The Pequot Massacre of 1637 cost the Indians several hundred lives most likely, including women and children. General Custer lost more than 200 men when his regiment was wiped out at the Battle of the Little Bighorn, but these surprisingly large numbers stand out conspicuously as more the exception than the rule for that very reason.
Native American nations, on the other hand, did lose hundreds of people during certain infamous massacres: besides the Pequot slaughter by fire, sword, and musket fire, there was the Sand Creek Massacre of peaceful Indians in Colorado in 1864 and the final dismal tragedy of the vengeful Wounded Knee Massacre in South Dakota in 1890. These three massacres alone involved the deaths of hundreds of Native Americans.
Yet if those numbers of dead soldiers and warriors once seemed shockingly high, they soon pale in significance when we compare them to the far greater carnage in the fight over slavery. The Civil War was the first and only time Americans fought against each other to the death on such a massive scale. If either side had to decimate the other in order to claim victory, both sides seemed quite willing and able to pursue the bloodiest of campaigns to the bitter end.
No mere ancient feud of rival clans, the sheer magnitude of the war boggles the imagination. The four year struggle involved vast geographical regions–from Richmond on the Atlantic Seaboard to Vicksburg on the Mississippi River. The military history includes stories from Gettysburg, Pennsylvania in the north to battle sites in Virginia and South Carolina and Georgia in the Deep South.
The incredibly difficult logistics of moving soldiers and supplies, the large amount of war materiel of every kind (uniforms, rations, tents, horses, ammunition, rifles and artillery pieces) which had to be transported from place to place, from advance to retreat, from one march to the next, all bespeak of a conflagration worthy of Armageddon.
The willingness of both sides to throw tens of thousands of men into a single battle—all this makes the Civil War the most frightening episode of “fratricide” in our country’s history: thousands dead on both sides in one bloody battle after another—all in a matter of a few hours on the special days of bloodiest conflict and destruction.
In viewing the incredibly high casualties of the deadliest battles, we may be tempted to lose sight of the war’s great over-arching moral principle: do all men deserve to be free? Rhetorically, we might also well ask: how did a nation founded on Jefferson’s eloquent plea that “All men are created equal” condone chattel slavery for as long as it did?
Certainly, learning the details of the war is a great challenge in and of itself: so many battles, so many carefully planned campaigns, so many unexpected disasters, so many advances and retreats! First one army, then the other, would experience great success at the start of a pitched battle, only to discover that its early gains were to be followed by a sudden and inexplicable reversal of fortune.
Part 2
It is a mad roller coaster ride to follow all the intricate ups and downs when examining even the largest battles—a pattern of conflict and confusion and attrition that lasted through uncharted reaches of time and space until the war’s inevitable dénouement finally took hold.
To re-enact a Civil War battle can certainly help non-scholars to visualize, however imperfectly, something of what the war must have felt like for soldiers. Alongside these carefully orchestrated re-enactments (amazing in themselves) one frequently finds the presence of a subtler theme of “what if”: hypothetical situations wherein Civil War buffs gather together to suggest that the outcome of this or that battle could have and should have turned out differently if a different strategy had been followed:
“If only this general had moved his men here instead of there” . . .
From such speculation it is an easy leap of the imagination to go one step further: that if one particular battle had turned out differently, then the subsequent chain of events which followed would have been transformed as well—ultimately, the very outcome of the war itself might have been affected!
This approach seems a particularly popular form of after-the-fact reasoning, especially for those well-versed Civil War aficionados fond of promoting the notion how the South “might have won” had it not been for this decision, that strategy: this blunder, that mistake. They carefully seek out examples of “bad luck” and “unforeseen happenstance” to explain the South’s defeat while trying to imagine what a reversal of outcome in one or two major battles might have meant to the fortunes of the Confederacy.
That’s all well and good. People are free to study the Civil War any which way they choose; they are free to hypothesize to their hearts’ content. Of course it’s rather difficult to know, 150 years later, just how much of this type of speculation is realistic; how much is sound military analysis and how much unsupportable speculation and wishful thinking!
Had a southern general positioned his soldiers on different terrain, would he really have turned the coming loss into a victory? And could this hypothetical victory have set in motion a chain of events that would have ended with the Confederacy victorious over the Union Army? Was the South that close to victory except for a poor decision or two?
It’s a bit like the expression “For want of a nail the horse was lost”–then the rider, the battle, and finally the war. It all hinges on a very dubious “if” that may seem larger than life in conjecture but which does not necessarily correspond to a full and comprehensive understanding of actual battle conditions.
Such conjecture tends to skip over the vast number of variables that also helped determine the outcome of the largest battles during those faraway Civil War days; one or two simple chess-like moves in hindsight can hardly do justice to the full complexity of strategies and range of material resources that contributed to a particular defeat.
Yet, even allowing the premise to flame to life for a brief moment—that one general’s changed tactics could have reversed the outcome of one specific battle—there remains quite a huge gap between a single battle and the war as a whole. It is hard to say how anyone today could conclude with any degree of certainty that changing the outcome of one battle demonstrates the war would have ended differently.
During wartime, the other side is not standing still; their officers and soldiers would have to react differently in the weeks that followed this hypothetical defeat–the actual course of subsequent events cannot truly be known even if we “change” the outcome of one or more particular battles.
This approach assumes all future historical development can hang by a single thread, rather than assessing accurately the relative strengths of the two warring sides. You might as well say if the South had won all the battles they would have won the war, but they didn’t win all the battles and they didn’t win the war. Fact, not fiction, must dominate in the study of history insofar as fact and truth are prizes to pursue. General Sherman perhaps came closest to hitting the nail right on the head when he said:
“You people of the South don’t know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don’t know what you’re talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it …
“Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.”
In what became ultimately a war of attrition in large part, it is readily apparent that the North had far more men and deeper resources to commit to the struggle. Even in battles where the Confederacy lost fewer men than the Union Army, the South could not replace their losses as easily as the North. Some such “wins” become hollow victories, in essence, because the South was forced to bring in younger and younger soldiers—even boys, untrained and inexperienced—while the North constantly increased its draft allotments of men willing and able to take up arms to save the Union and simultaneously free the slave.
Part 3
No matter how well-crafted an exercise in military “maybes” is handled, very little certainty can be attached to these “what ifs”. Perhaps because the Confederacy lost, there tends to be a particular fascination with this hypothetical game for Southern sympathizers who are especially enthralled by such speculation—yet, if we are to venture down this road at all, isn’t it just as reasonable to suggest hypothetical ways in which Union defeats could have been turned into Union victories?
If one can imagine the South winning a battle it actually lost, why not imagine a new Union victory in like fashion? In terms of such speculation, projecting forward, what will be gained? There will inevitably be a drift toward equalization and a return to stalemate between opposing hypotheticals in the end. Just as a Southern sympathizer can move Confederate generals and soldiers into a winning position, a Union sympathizer likewise can move Northern Army commanders and soldiers out of harm’s way and thrust upon them ingenious new counter-maneuvers in order to produce new victories!
The question, “What if General Lee had not attacked Gettysburg and avoided that disaster?” can easily be offset with “What if General McClellan had gone on the attack early in the war when he had clear numerical superiority of men under arms and not wasted time congregating an even larger army, allowing General Lee time to move his mobile army away?”
Yes, Civil War buffs can focus on a single military campaign, a single battle, even a single hour within a battle—and come up with all kinds of novel invention. They can move their chess pieces around to their hearts’ content until they finally emerge with the cherished and much desired outcome.
This game of chance, of “what if’s” and “maybes”, can be extended ad infinitum once the habit is begun—there is always a way to postulate a new scene or changed circumstances, and thus a totally different outcome. Whether cleverly done or no, all such hypothesizing will always run head-on into Historical Truth: a decisive Union victory and a permanent end to chattel slavery in 1865.
Part 4
While playing the “what if” game, Americans sometimes forget to step back to take a look at the larger picture. They could just as readily evaluate material factors likely to affect the war’s outcome, regardless of whether this battle or that battle turned out differently.
Today, with the help of carefully complied statistics, one can compare the total population of both North and South–which in turn determined the number of men available to take arms, one factor among many which clearly favored the North.
Teenagers were being conscripted into the Confederacy near the end of the war, and even the notion of arming the slaves themselves was discussed! (under the somewhat ludicrous misapprehension that a slave could be given a gun and expected to fight to keep himself in slavery). The North, on the other hand, put out ever larger draft calls—75.000 men at a time–and successfully met these new quotas.
Furthermore and perhaps even more crucially, there is an immense difference that emerges when comparing the North and South’s respective levels of industrial development, such as the number of factories, mineral resources available, and the number of miles of railroad tracks already laid.
Almost by definition, the industrialized north was light years ahead of the agricultural south in nearly all such matters. Once again, such a comparison, whether cursory or in-depth, unquestionably favored the Union Army in terms of war materiel available bolstered by the expectation of continuous production as a variable of increasing demand.
Finally, there remains the all-important question of army morale. To what extent will a man’s beliefs invigorate the soldier’s determination to persevere and sacrifice at all costs? It is sometimes assumed the Confederate soldier fought with great passion while the commitment of the northern soldier was less intense.
Facts do not bear out this contention. The goals of saving the Union and of freeing the slave rang as true in the hearts of Northern soldiers as preserving slavery did for the Confederate soldier. Desertions occurred among Confederate soldiers as well as less than fully engaged activity in some battles; no one side ever has a full monopoly on the foolish claim that all soldiers are as gung ho about killing endlessly as the claims of generals and leaders try to make people believe.
Nor should students of the Civil War forget that the movement for freedom among the slaves and their Abolitionist supporters ran wide and deep; together they wrote a new chapter in America’s history of freedom. These men and women willing to risk their lives to escape from bondage–along with white people who hid them, fed them, and transported them deeper into the land of freedom– actively built a historic Underground that became a powerful historical force for change in its own right.
No mere re-imagining of a new “left” or “right” turn maneuver of a company of soldiers on any Civil War battlefield could have stopped this broad powerful movement for Freedom. These moral catalysts reflected not the vagaries of a day or an hour but ripening historical circumstances; the growing anti-slavery movement could not be suppressed indefinitely, though the South tried through secession to do exactly that.
Hence, much of this military “hypothesizing” strikes one as almost other-worldly, insofar as it typically fails to recognize the much deeper currents of change that were coming to a head in the 1860’s. It is one matter to study the actual progression, well documented, of the Civil War itself, and quite another to inject fictional possibilities into a past era without acknowledging the more fundamental moral and historical principles involved in affecting the war’s outcome. In any event, all the players and combatants, all the men and women, have passed more a century and a half ago: they are dead and buried. We are appealing to shadows, to memories, to ghosts of the past.
Part 5
Having earned my doctorate in American History, a course of study based much on the facts of our nation’s history–and interpretations based on those facts–it is equally hard to fathom in what way such speculation is ever a better way of understanding the Civil War than taking the time to learn what actually happened and why.
It is highly unlikely that an amateur military buff today could do a better job of making battlefield decisions than the real-life commanders did when faced with on-the-spot difficulties in the heat of battle. In any event, there is no way to check the accuracy of such speculation. From the comfort of an armchair, most anyone can win a “revised” battle: hindsight is indeed twenty-twenty.
Such gamesmanship can provide a new “winning strategy” but there is no real way to put it to the test—no way to consider how the other side would have adjusted its own strategies to compensate. Change the point of attack to create a military win…the other side might choose a new location to strengthen its defenses double-fold. Who can tell?
One cannot change just one hypothetical circumstance and ignore the possibility of adjustment by the other side. In the end, it is too cut-and-dry an approach to pretend such hypothesizing could actually have made a significant difference, for it does not do justice to the complexity and flux of actual battles–to say nothing of the accidents associated with war or the fluctuating unpredictability of human nature and decision-making itself.
It is far better to try and weigh fairly all the factors–demographic, economic, cultural, and ideological–involved in military strategizing on both sides. It seldom promotes a healthy understanding of history to merely pick a single moment in time and say: “See? If only this one small fickle incident had not occurred exactly the way it did, then all would have turned out differently!” If the Portuguese had not begun trading in slaves, what need would there have been of an American Civil War four hundred years later?
It’s possible to indulge such thinking ad infinitum as an exercise in logic; it may even be useful as a tool for teachers wishing to motivate students to familiarize themselves with the details of Civil War battles. Ultimately, however, no one has a crystal ball when it comes to such speculation. No one can say for sure what large scale outcome “might have occurred” differently…assuming one is willing to entertain such a hypothetical and a-historical fantasy in the first place.
Part 6
Most of us ordinary folk travel and study at a regular pace: we are left with the reality of what did occur. Perhaps it is because some of us lack the imagination to play with history in such a manner—or perhaps it is because we have the common sense to stay grounded by remaining content with the tried and true: the known facts, the actual history, the reasonable explanations and interpretations built up over time.
Certainly, hypothesizing creatively may be a tempting mental exercise for particularly agile and analytical minds, but in the end how fruitful it is actually to debate how the Civil War “might have turned out differently” based merely on such speculation?
We know the two great outcomes of 1865: the Civil War ended slavery and the Union victory kept the United States of America intact as one nation—that much we do know. Are there still Southern sympathizers among us wishing to create an alternative ending to suit their prejudices whereby the Confederacy won–and thus free to keep Slavery intact as an institution of racist exploitation and oppression in a separate country? Why else play the game of military “what-if” maneuvers?
Do we really want to explore what it would mean to indulge this “if the South had won” fantasy without considering the feelings and opinions of tens of millions of Black American citizens?
Do we truly think the continuing terrors of Slavery–had the South won–fit subject to be treated as a game of hypothetical military strategizing?
Is it healthy to speculate how changing certain in-the-field decisions might have led to the exact opposite outcome—instead of Slavery vanquished, Slavery triumphant?
Would the South have become its own country and would Slavery still exist, even today?
These are questions no one can answer. As intriguing a “game” as it is for some amateur Civil War buffs, such close scrutiny of past military strategies hardly seems wise to many another among the rest of us.
Why revisit the bloody past in such fashion? To what greater purpose should we risk reawakening old wounds? Why seize the moment during the re-enactment of Civil War scenes to speculate at all?
Granted such a dramatic approach is a novel way to study history–to recreate a Civil War encampment certainly adds vigor to our textbooks with their too few illustrations and meager sprinkle of black-and-white photographs. On a grander scale, as in the production of an educational documentary, such a recreated scene can reveal to us an amazing amount of scholarly understanding of what actually occurred—but such documentaries are usually devoted to historical accuracy and scrupulously avoid unrestrained hypothesizing.
It is primarily at the local level, particularly where the southern presence and sympathy remain strongest, that the secondary question “what if” (what if the South had won) always seems to reflect a rebel bias (or rebel) lurking nearby. Is the war not over?
Part 7
For me, therefore, there are three far more important questions to ask concerning these re-enactments:
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When are these role-playing Confederate soldiers going to admit they were and are morally wrong to defend slavery?
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When is the South going to apologize to our nation on the fundamental issue of Slavery underlying the Civil War?
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When are we going to stop indulging these conjectural “what if’s” that allow Southern sympathizers to fantasize how the South might have won the Civil War–and remind the world that chattel slavery was an indefensible, brutal, and immoral labor regime of the most violent, exploitative, and oppressive nightmare imaginable?
As President Lincoln wrote in his two inaugural addresses:
“One section of our country believes slavery is right, and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong, and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute . . . (First Inaugural Address)
“One eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the Southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was, somehow, the cause of the war.” (Second Inaugural Address)
I fail to see the sense of pretending to change a particular southern battle strategy in order to argue the South “might have won” . . . had it not been for this error in tactics or because some inept general made an untimely blunder: if only Colonel Pickett’s charge at the Battle of Gettysburg had not fallen short of its mark; one “if only” following another!
Why spend so much time wondering how the South might have won?
If we must speak hypothetically, perhaps it is time to ask a different question: what needed to occur to avoid all the bloodshed and carnage in the first place? Consider for a moment:
“if only” the slave-owning class had not been so greedy as to deliberately plunge the nation into the bloody chaos of civil war, perhaps there never would have been those hundreds of thousands of deaths! (nor all those subsequent “re-enactments”).
The astute reader might rebuff this question by flinging back in my face my own earlier observation: what is the point of unknowable speculation?
The difference, of course, is that I am not suggesting a hypothetical change concerning the actual nature and sequence of battles that took place. I am addressing a moral principle regarding our country’s philosophy derived from the American Revolution and from the Declaration of Independence right down to the present day: a view of equality that surely still has some relevance for our modern society.
My hypothetical premise merely asks the reader to consider that the underlying cause of the Civil War was due the abusive, arrogant, and unrestrained powers of the South’s largest plantation owners–whose fortunes were built upon slave labor!
If one wishes to consider “what if’s” then why not extend such reasoning to include the racist beliefs and coercive practices of the slave-owning class on the eve of the Civil War?
Certainly, such a change of heart would have left as deep an imprint on the future course of the United States as changing the hypothetical outcome of any single battle.
Why not ask: “what if” the South had acted in a morally righteous manner and voluntarily emancipated its slaves rather than choosing to fight to protect its brutal and dehumanizing practices of slavery by relying on the violence of war?
Beyond the military context, these new questions address many of the real-life situations that still derive largely from America’s long history of racism, the unfortunate legacy of which we see all around us today.
Asking when will we, as democratic-minded Americans, stop being racist is not an irrelevant question. Rather, it is a question of the highest order, one that is susceptible to immediate and practical attention today.
All the profound moral questions concerning slavery–and its horrific stories of bigotry and brutality, its bequeathed legacy of segregation and discrimination–remain just as deserving of resolution today as they did in the long ago past.
Surely these fundamental moral issues deserve just as much attention as any Civil War buff’s obsession with “chess pieces” as he studies how to move men and artillery around on an imaginary battlefield in order to create a completely “inverted” outcome!
Is this imaginative strategizing or camouflaged racial bias behind all such attempts to show how the South could have won?
And so I ask again, when are these men who re-enact their roles as soldiers of the Confederacy going to stop re-enacting, stop mock-fighting, and apologize instead?
When are these southern soldiers going to apologize to the nation as a whole for going to war to defend Slavery?
That is my question: take it or leave it, as you choose.
