HMGS-MidSouth

We are approaching the 150th anniversary of the start of the war. 150 years ago this month (December 2010 as I am writing this) the country was on edge. South Carolina voted for secession and declared they had broken from the Union. Major Robert Anderson, under cover of night, reinforced Fort Sumter and the newspapers were filled with talk of war.

We are starting a new series of historical articles on the Civil War. They are written by Peter Mancini. His interpretations are his own and don’t necessarily reflect those of HMGS-MidSouth. We encourage you to comment on these articles in the Forums and in the comment section for each article. However, given that sometimes talking about the American Civil War can still ruffle some feathers we have to emphasize that there will be no tolerance for hate speech. We hope you find these articles informative and useful. It is important to note that whenever talking about history we view it from our modern evolved mix of ethics and values. We cannot use these to judge people in the past because they did not have the great benefit of all that we have learned. The ground facts were different in days gone by.

We are approaching the 150th anniversary of the start of the war. 150 years ago this month (December 2010 as I am writing this) the country was on edge. South Carolina voted for secession and declared they had broken from the Union. Major Robert Anderson, under cover of night, reinforced Fort Sumter and the newspapers were filled with talk of war.

The War had many names such as The War of Southern Independence, The War of Unprovoked Norther Aggression, The War Between the States and a few other permutations. None cater to everyone but the least offensive to most is the American Civil War. In gaming parlance we abbreviate it to ACW, mainly because TWUNA just looks and sounds funny.

My first real introduction to the Civil War was in American History Class in the early 1980’s at a prep school. When PBS later aired Ken Burn’s 13-hour long Civil War documentary I was perplexed. How did I not know any of this stuff? I went and dug up my notebooks from school. We had spent a week studying the entire war.  No wonder I didn’t know anything about the war. Thankfully I got introduced to historical miniature wargaming and began to teach myself about the history! If you are unfamiliar with the events of the American Civil War, this series will hopefully help bring you up to speed.

Candidate Abraham Lincoln

I originally started to game the ACW period in order to learn and understand the history. Reading is abstract. Gaming puts a handle and a form on abstraction. When you can place on the table Fair Oaks and Seven Pines (technically two battles but happening simultaneously by the same Armies and quite close to each other) and can be faced with the same decisions as the Generals did back then, you start to understand what they may have been thinking and why it turned out the way it did. They lacked our hindsight and our ability to see the whole battlefield (giants that we are over our gaming tables) but we lack their sense of anxiety of being in battle. Regardless, when it comes to examining the decisions made, we feel closer to them and the history through gaming. We become excited to read and understand the history to contemplate the mechanics of the battle. Why did Johnston give a long and rambling speech to Longstreet to present his orders? Why did the other Generals get written but vague and contradictory orders from him? How did individual initiative alter the outcome of the battle in spite of the orders received? These are all great questions we ask ourselves when we begin to game any period. The joy comes from being able to take part, through simulation, in the important events. Historical gaming, in particular, lends itself to teaching us about true human strengths and weaknesses.

My purpose for this series of articles is to re-ignite a passion for ACW gaming and to remind you fine folks of the history of the Civil War. I hope that by the time Nashcon arrives everyone will be in fine spirits to play as many games from the period as they can find fit to enter.

Casus Belli

The start of the Civil War is a murky bit of history. While there was a lot of heated debate about Slavery, it wasn’t an act of the Northern states going into Southern states to forcibly free the slaves. In fact, contrary to a view of altruism for slaves, Freed Men were considered 2nd class citizens in the North. Freed Men were exploited and kept from many jobs simply because of skin color and a universal belief (held by many in both the North and the South) that skin color determined race and that some races were inferior to others. We now know that there is no such thing as race and that we are all part of the same species. The North continued to profit from global slave trade even after the Civil War ended via it’s fleets involved in human traffic. While there was a growing abolition movement and not everyone held the belief that skin color determined a person’s worth the war was not begun to set anyone free. The secessionist conventions in many states had active debate on many issues. While many believed that Lincoln held abolitionists views and feared what the Federal
Government would do, the fear universally was about sovereignty. Many in every state that held such a convention advocated unionism and cooperation. It is important to understand the complexity of the decision for the States to secede from the Union. South Carolina, the first state to secede created a document that explained the immediate causes that led to secession. You can read it here:

South Carolina Immediate Causes of Secession

Congressman Jefferson Davis

The first step towards war was the December, 1860 secession of South Carolina. At the time it was believed that the many Northern states, whose economy was industrial and not in need of forced labor would conspire to remove the rights of Southern States. The question wasn’t just about slavery but about sovereignty of the states vs. the power of the central (Federal) government. The fear was that the North could impose laws on the South that the South did not agree to and that local laws could be overturned by tribunal (via the Supreme Court). Though slavery was a common issue, it wasn’t the continuance of slavery that drove the Southern states to contemplate succession. It was the ability for the states to choose what they felt was the correct course of action and to create and maintain their own laws.

There can be no doubt that slavery was a societal ill. Slavery is truly one of the most awful institutions man has ever devised. It was only justifiable with false concepts such as racial inequality. The whole concept of race was devised for colonization and enslavement. Later in the 20th century the Nazis would invent the concept of a Jewish race and an Aryan race and use that to justify global war and genocide. It is a complex issue and worth looking into for the interested arm chair historian. Racial relations in the North and South varied. Enslaving others was not relegated to just people of one skin color. Freed Men also held slaves and in 1830, for example,  there were several Freed Men who owned slaves in New York City. It is unthinkable to us today. Our current President of the United States would not have been allowed to move to Chicago, Illinois or anywhere else in the state during the Civil War simply because of his skin color and that of his family and that was a Northern state. That did not change during the time period of the Civil War. With such discrimination and with the North continuing to engage in global human traffic we cannot say the war was about Slavery. Slavery was just simply a major and hotly debated civil rights issue at the time and recrimination from those debates fueled anger and highlighted the cultural differences between North and South.

Did South Carolina have the right to secede from the Union? A text book used at West Point, “Views on the Constitution” and James Kent’s book “Commentaries on American Law”, both of which date from the 1820’s, indicate that secession was a legal right of states. The States were independent when they acceded to the Union and the nature of the structure of the Federal Government suggested that independent nature. Secessionists movements worldwide today gain no question from our media or government as to their legitimacy. Consider the movements in Quebec, former Eastern Europe, Czechoslovakia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and many others. The US has fought in some cases, and given material and rhetorical support in others to assert the right of those states to secede.

The argument against the right of South Carolina to secede takes, generally, two approaches. One is an emotional investment in the magic of “The Union” or, as Lincoln said it, “united we stand, divided we fall.” In other words, Lincoln was saying a war would destroy both North and South. This is clearly not true in hindsight. The South was destroyed. The North, having endured a long and costly war, was fine when peace came and, indeed, had enough money to rebuild much of the South. That rebuilding, of course, was necessary due to Total War approach the North took in fighting the war. Look at it from another point of view – Texas seceded from Mexico. Do you think Texas would have been better off if it hadn’t?

The second approach is that the South fought to protect the institution of slavery. It suggests that if there never had been slavery there never would have been a civil war. That would make the American Civil War the only civil war in history to be fought over an ideological issue. However that is simply not true. As stated before the real reasons were questions of sovereignty. Consider this, Texas almost seceded from the Union in 1850, ten years before South Carolina. The Federal Government was behind a convention to form the state of New Mexico on land belonging to Texas. Calls of force were put forth to protect the integrity of Texas. Eventually a compromise was struck. Other states considered withdrawal from the Union due to other issues. There were other forces at work that could have caused secession. Even at early dates, Southerners were feeling economic pressure from the North and spoke of breaking the Union. The issue of slavery was just one of many.

Why War?

Fort Sumter

While the right to secede may have been there, the desire by the Administration to let the South just go was not. A complex series of actions caused the war. A set of missteps by the South were largely at fault for giving the spark to start the war.

Lincoln did not take his seat in the Oval Office until March, 1861. This President was faced with the withdrawal of seven states before he had even set foot into the Oval Office. South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas had all seceded from the Union before he took office. The previous lame duck President did nothing to stop them.

Nor was there anything to do. Lincoln, like his predecessor had no power to stop them. The constitutional question was murky and he reasoned it probably would have been their right. He desperately did not want to see the Union dissolved.

The majority of the Navy was away at foreign stations. Many captains (then, the highest rank in the Navy) did not foresee any role for them to play in the war. Thus there was no naval preparation prior to this time in case hostilities broke out. Secretary of State William Seward took this crisis as an opportunity to make a power play to become a Prime Minister and to gain control of the Navy from Gideon Wells, secretary of the Navy. His brazen attempt was slapped down by both Lincoln and Wells. However it left said the fact that there was no Administration’s policy on the institution of slavery. Lincoln wished to not interfere with it but to constrain it to its present boundaries. At this point in time there were still 8 slave holding states that had not yet left the Union. Wanting to not lose those states, knowing the Army was dispersed and on the frontier and the population’s general mood being “let them go,” he had few real options. His only hope was for the Confederacy to commit the first act of war. “You can have no conflict without you yourselves being the aggressors,” he warned the Confederacy.

Major Robert Anderson

Gideon Wells

When states seceded they took with them Federal land, buildings, ships in ports, bays and harbors, and all properties contained within. By this time only two Federal properties had not yet been seized: Fort Sumter, Charleston, South Carolina and Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Florida. Both were still manned by Federal personnel.

Fort Sumter wasn’t the only fort or military position in or surrounding Charleston Harbor. However, Major Anderson had only a token force of 70 men to garrison the fortifications. Upon learning of the secession of South Carolina he withdrew his men to the least accessible fort in the harbor, which was Sumter. For it’s part, South Carolina occupied the other forts and built new ones to further isolate Sumter. Word went to Lincoln from Major Anderson that if he did not get resupplied by April 16th he would be forced to surrender the fort. For the Lincoln Administration this set a hard deadline and planning began immediately to relieve the fort.

Behind Lincoln’s back, Secretary of State Seward was negotiating with the Confederacy through intermediaries. In particular he was negotiating the withdrawal of troops from both Federal stations. Meanwhile a plan was discussed by the Lincoln Administration in which shallow draft vessels would try to swiftly resupply both forts, with force if necessary. Gideon Wells, aware of the weakness of the Home Squadron, advised against force because the squadron wasn’t ready and it would lead to a civil war clearly started by the North. Lincoln, however, finally decided that the forts needed to be relieved.

USS Powhatten

On April 10, 1861, the USS Powhatten, just days earlier heading to be scrapped, was pulled into this relief mission. It was ordered to Sumter to watch over the 10 transport flotilla that was to resupply the beleaguered fort. On April 12th the flotilla arrived but the Powhatten did not. This was a mystery to the Flotilla commander at the time.

Meanwhile President Lincoln informed the local Confederate commander, P.G.T. Beauregard, that Sumter was to be provisioned peaceably, but by force if necessary. Jefferson Davis informed Beauregard that he could demand the surrender of the fort. Beauregard did demand surrender on the 10th but Major Anderson rejected that call.

The day the flotilla arrived, on the 12th, Beauregard ordered the fort bombarded. On the 13th the fort struck it’s colors and after a brief negotiation, the flotilla was allowed to remove the survivors of the garrison and return them North on parole.

The result of the firing on Sumter was disastrous for the South. If there had been a constitutional question about secession, it was no longer an issue. The aggression of South Carolina upon a Federal fort meant that the state was now in insurrection and that the assemblies and people of South Carolina and, by extension, the whole Confederacy itself were now branded rebels (and at the time they took great offense at this label!) At this point the North had it’s legal justification for war and thus it began.

USS Powhatten mystery?

P.G.T. Beauregard

So, the more observant of you are wondering, what happened to the USS Powhatten? The mystery of that ship falls upon the scheming Secretary of State, once again. Bypassing the Secretary of the Navy, Secretary of State Seward, created secret orders for Captain David D. Porter of the USS Powhatten. Intelligence sources determined that Spain was going to invade the Dominican Republic on Hispaniola island. Seward, in all of his arrogance, determined the best way to keep the States together was to start a fight with a foreign power. He sent a strongly worded diplomatic message to Madrid, protesting the impending invasion and sought to start war with Spain under the guise of defending the Dominican Republic and the North American hemisphere. What Seward didn’t know was that Santo Domingo was fearful that Haiti was about to invade again (the Republic had only just won independence in 1844 from Haiti) and had asked Spain to annex it!

How was this disaster averted? Gideon Wells was in communication with Captain Foote of the New York Navy Yard when it was slipped that the Yard was under “special instructions.” Wells, able to smell a wharf rat in the warehouse, suspected something was afoot and really only had one suspect. Wells was unaware of what these special instructions were because Foote and Porter were told of the utmost secret nature of them. However, Wells suspected they were disastrous and ordered a hold on Powhatten’s movement. He also discovered that the reinforcement of Pensacola had not happened and sent a messenger at flank speed to give the order immediately. Lt. Worden was sent with that message. Later in the war he would captain the USS Monitor.

Wells confronted Seward. It is not recorded what was said or what Wells did but one can imagine apoplexy ensued. Seward stated the experience was what we today might call a “learning moment” and would not interfere with Navy business in the future.

Thus began the American Civil War. It had a complex genesis and, as we will see, the reasons for continuing the war changed over the years. What many believed to be a 30 or 90 day war would end up taking over 4 years to conclude.