A Brief Overview of the Civil War from the Perspective of Genesee County

by Michael J. Eula, Ph.D. Genesee County Historian

On the fifteenth of April, 1861, The Daily Republican Advocate of Batavia, New York proclaimed in its headline “War! War! War!” Informing the public of the Confederate attack on the federal installation at Ft. Sumter, South Carolina three days before, the reader was told that “reports up to Saturday afternoon” suggested that

. . . the besieged forces might yet hold out some time longer, although the barracks and other wooden material were in flames. We hoped that the gallant band of heroes would ultimately be able to hold their position, but the odds were fearfully against them.

Nearing its conclusion, the article reported that

Without waiting for a single hostile act, without waiting (for) the arrival of the unarmed vessel, the bombardment of Sumter was commenced, and the war opened. What its end will be, God only knows.

Throughout this article we see a stress on uncertainty from the Union perspective that combines with a concurrent emphasis upon odds stacked against the federal forces. While this perspective is understandable within the context of the early stage of the war, hindsight reveals that such a vantage point proved to be unwarranted. Indeed, the odds were clearly stacked against the Confederacy from the beginning. It was the Confederate States of America that took the enormous gamble of a military insurrection against the North – one that proved to be, at least in military terms, a disaster for the “secesh” by 1865.

What made the commencement of hostilities such a risk for the South? To begin with, the entire southern population – including African-American slaves – totaled about nine million people. The Union, on the other hand, had a population of approximately twenty-two million. But population was only the start of the story. The Confederacy had an untested government that ironically resembled in broad terms the United States government – with the obvious exception of slavery, which received formal acknowledgment as such in the Confederate Constitution. Along with an untested government, the South lacked a railroad network that could rival that of the North. Its banking system was relatively undeveloped, as was its industrial base – a fatal flaw in what proved to be a modern, industrial-based war. The Confederate navy was not a threat. Just as importantly, the South found itself somewhat isolated in an international arena struggling to end slavery. The South was a titanic anachronism in moral, political, and economic terms, and of course there were those in the Confederacy who were less than enthusiastic about secession – which, ironically, included General Robert E. Lee himself, whose wife was the great granddaughter of the revolutionary leader George Washington’s wife, Martha.

Lee’s Virginia was of course one of the states that had seceded from the Union to form a new country. Leaving the Union on April 17th, 1861, it was preceded in this drastic step by South Carolina on December 20th, 1860, which was then followed by Mississippi on the ninth of January, 1861, and by Florida the next day. Alabama followed suit on January 11th, as did Georgia on the nineteenth of January. A week later Louisiana left the Union, and by June of 1861 North Carolina, Arkansas, and Tennessee had all left as well. Up against the Union forces stretching from California in the far west to New York and the remainder of the Northeast, the Confederacy found itself in the unenviable position of having to mobilize for a war which on paper showed itself early to be a challenge that eventually proved to be overwhelming. What motivated the South to risk all on such an undertaking? What is so compelling about a conflict that has produced the phenomenon of its having become the most written about event in United States history? A more comprehensive answer to the question of southern motivation would take us beyond the scope of this short overview of the Civil War. Suffice it to say that at least politically, the southern position revolved around the idea of state sovereignty. This was expressed as early as 1828 by a South Carolina lawyer, John C. Calhoun, who had served as a Secretary of War under President James Monroe, and as Vice President in the administrations of Presidents John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson. In Exposition and Protest Calhoun argued that ultimate political authority is found on the state level. It was the states who delegated power to the federal government – and not the other way around. The Confederate position was one of defense of what was understood to be its sovereign independence – of which slavery was a part. Conversely, the North was equally determined to maintain the integrity of the federal union.

This ideological motivation for the war combined with the economic realities of a Northern industrialization that amounted to a clash of civilizations. In general, the North and its factory system was producing an increasingly urban society featuring a free labor force standing in stark contrast to a southern society that remained overwhelmingly agricultural, rural, and dependent upon the labor of about four million African-American slaves. The war was as much a clash of competing visions of what modern America would look like as it was a clash between competing visions of government. Ultimately, the resolution of the issue – would modern America be an industrial, urban one based upon free labor – or not - was one decided upon the battlefield. This confrontation between civilizations was captured in a fascinating editorial found in Batavia’s Daily Republican Advocate on April 25th, 1861. Entitled “A Negro Astride the Statue of Washington,” we are told that

The Richmond (Virginia) secessionists actually celebrated the passage of the Act of Secession by the Convention, by placing a negro astride the statue of Washington in the Capital. We will not trust ourselves to comment upon the proceeding. Thank God that the time of such diabolical wretches is short- very short.

The battlefield that proved to be the arena within which the question of America’s future was decided was one looking radically different than those of previous wars. Its characteristics were those of the all too familiar battlefields of the murderous twentieth century. Scientific and technological breakthroughs by the middle of the nineteenth century combined with factory production to create a radically different kind of warfare. New technologies such as rifled artillery and armored trains accentuated a central feature of this war – the use of large land armies. By 1865 over two million men would have served in the federal army, while an additional eight hundred thousand soldiers served in the Confederate Army. The Civil War armies were unprecedented in their sheer size, and initially the formation of such huge military forces was predicated upon local efforts. Rallies were held, and volunteers were often secured in the flush of enthusiasm brought out by such gatherings. As a result of such a system of recruitment army units were typically made up of soldiers from the same area. Genesee County was no exception. On the seventeenth of April, 1861, The Republican Daily Advocate reported on one such meeting in Batavia:

Our Union Meeting

Our Union Meeting at Concert Hall, on Tuesday evening, made us proud of our citizens. At an early hour the large hall was crowded to its utmost capacity, and a spirit of enthusiasm generally prevailed – Junius A. Smith, Esq., presided, and Geo. P. Pringle, Esq., acted as Secretary. Patriotic speeches were made by the Chairman, and by Messrs. Geo. Babcock, R.H. Foote, S. Wakeman, Rev. Mr. Kauffman ( who addressed his German brethren in their own language), M.W. Hewitt, J.M. Willett, N.A. Woodward, Esqs., and others. About twenty of our young men enrolled their names as volunteers, and hosts more will do so immediately. The right kind of spirit animates our entire people. Political feelings are ignored, and everyone seems ready to sustain the government.

That same issue saw yet another description of a recruitment rally:

Union Rally Last Night

Through the patriotic exertions of Mr. Mallory and others, Concert Hall was obtained for holding the second Union Meeting.

The Batavia Brass Band volunteered last evening, and played Hail Columbia, Star Spangled Banner and Yankee Doodle, all of which were received with cheers . . .

Mr. George Babcock was called on, and made a most powerful speech. He was completely carried away by his love of country and sympathy for those who have already suffered by the rebels’ fire at Charleston: he spoke the sentiments of each heart in the room.

Mr. R.H. Foote made a move in the right direction, and called on the young men to do their duty.

Such rallies revealed an informal and democratic way of raising an army, and were a method in keeping with an historic American distrust of a large, professional standing army. An integral aspect of this tradition is the idea that an army in a democratic republic can only be one in which the people themselves freely consent to form an army – it would be undemocratic to compel military service. However, the Civil War is a modern war featuring unprecedented destructiveness and loss of life. This ruinous conflict was also a protracted one, and it did not take long before the insatiable demand for additional soldiers surpassed the number of volunteers. The Confederacy first felt the problem of an inadequate number of volunteers when it enacted its conscription law in April of 1862. The following March, in 1863, the federal government implemented the Enrollment Act, which rendered all able-bodies white male citizens aged twenty to forty-five eligible for military service.

As subsequent drafts in U.S. history would reveal, there were numerous exemptions granted in this 1863 law. Immunities were extended to clergy, high government officials, and men who were the sole support of orphans, indigent parents, or widows. There were also two other ways of avoiding military service. One was to pay another man who would serve in one’s place. A second means of avoidance was to pay a $300.00 fee to the federal government. States were divided into enrollment districts which then had to meet quotas through volunteers initially and then via the draft. Enrollment districts were known to compete for volunteers by offering enlistment bonuses, or bounties. There were cases in which “bounty jumpers” regularly registered and then deserted after the collection of a payment. In both the North and the South the draft provoked opposition. For some, the draft undermined individual freedom. For others, there was resentment among those who could not raise the money to pay for a substitute. As we discover in a publication of the “State Committee of Drafted Men” entitled “The First Draft in Genesee County,”

When the first draft came to Genesee County, about three hundred of her citizens were conscripted and held, and they had to enter the military service for three years, send a substitute for that time, or give the government $300 to get a substitute for them.

And despite their individual circumstances,

No matter how they were situated, as to their business, circumstances, and families – the call was imperative and they had to respond, no matter how great the hardship.

Accordingly,

They met the requirement – they either went, sent a substitute or paid the price of a substitute. Calculating it on the basis of commutation, they paid $90,000 to fill that quota for Genesee County.

At this point the “State Committee of Drafted Men” then acknowledged the inequity of the three subsequent drafts in Genesee County, and most likely were articulating some of the discontent felt by some in the County regarding the working of the draft:

. . . three other drafts were ordered, and then the towns and county, instead of letting other citizens be drafted and burdened personally, raised the money by tax and loan to procure substitutes for the men drafted or liable to draft. They did not suffer a hair of their other citizens’ heads to be injured. The men in the first draft must take care of themselves – the men in the later drafts must be cared for by the public, and at the public expense.

Rising now to a moral crescendo, the “State Committee of Drafted Men” asks

How is that for fairness, justice and equality, as between citizens of the same town and county?

But regardless of how they entered military service, the advent of weapons unprecedented in their ferocity – combined with enormous land armies – translated into what remains to this day the costliest war in United States history in terms of lives lost. Many of those casualties were the result of a situation in which the technology designed to kill had far outpaced the ability of medicine to heal. The same can be said of logistics – unsanitary and unpredictable food supplies, along with the realities of barracks life, both created unhealthy conditions that could prove to be fatal. Hence even if a soldier was not killed in battle, the chances for survival remained minimal. A typical army camp provided what were often, at best, rudimentary sanitary facilities. Consequently, dysentery, typhoid, and smallpox could prove to be as deadly as rifled artillery. Physicians did not yet understand the underlying causes of infections, nor had they the habit of sterilizing surgical instruments. The ability to efficiently transport wounded soldiers to a medical tent was often limited. Even if a wounded soldier did reach a medical tent he was received by weary surgeons working under harsh conditions. Given these realities it should not surprise us to find this article in the LeRoy Gazette on June 26th, 1861:

By telegraph arrived the news on June 26th, 1861 that James A. Bell from LeRoy, died in the barracks at Elmira. He was too ill to follow his regiment which had departed a few days earlier. His remains were assorted through the street by a procession of mourners, preceded by a musical band that played the “Death March.” Flags flew at half-mast and church bells tolled in honor of this dead soldier who was buried with military honors. James was 18 years old.

I am closing this short essay with a reference to eighteen year old James because when one looks at any war it is tempting to only examine tactics, strategies, geopolitics, and personalities. It is tempting to reduce the treatment to an exclusive discussion of specific battles, changes in the general staff, weapons, etc. But what is absent in such an approach is what war means for countless and anonymous human beings – such as LeRoy’s James A. Bell – for whom the war is really about personal security, food, shelter, medical care, and the longed for day of a return home. It is probably not an accident that for those who survive the carnage the war is thought about not in terms of statistics or broad political objectives, but instead, in terms so eminently human. I therefore conclude with a personal view of the war. It was once said that ultimately it is novelists and poets who shake us and compel us to look and listen to the individuals most directly affected by war. In the Spirit of the Times, published in Batavia on April 15th, 1865, we find on the front page a poem entitled “The Dying Soldier,” a portion of which is found below:

Dear mother, the sun hangs low in the west, And the stars are beginning to shine, The birds are all gone to their place of rest, In the tops of the cedar and pine, The booming of cannon I heard afar off As the strife of the battle went on, But how the glad shout of the boys ring out, And I know that the battle is won . . .

But now I am passing away to my rest, Never here shall I see thee again, For soon I shall stand in the ranks of the blest, Where, they say, is no sorrow and pain . . .