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A Savage War A SAVAGE WAR A SAVAGE WAR A Military History of the Civil War Williamson Murray and Wayne Wei- siang Hsieh Princeton University Press Princeton & Oxford Copyright © 2016 by Princeton University Press Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540 In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press, 6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR press .princeton .edu Jacket photograph by Alexander Gardner (1821–1882). Ruins of Gallego Flour Mills, Richmond, Virginia, 1865. Culver Pictures / The Art Archive at Art Resource, NY. Graphic courtesy of Shutterstock. All Rights Reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Names: Murray, Williamson, author. | Hsieh, Wayne Wei-siang, author. Title: A savage war : a military history of the Civil War / Williamson Murray and Wayne Hsieh. Description: Princeton : Princeton University Press, 2016. | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2016008730 | ISBN 9780691169408 (hardback : alk. paper) Subjects: LCSH: United States—History—Civil War, 1861–1865—Campaigns. Classification: LCC E470 .M88 2016 | DDC 973.7/3—dc23 LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2016008730 British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available This book has been composed in Baskerville 10 Pro, Clarendon LT Std, and John Sans White Pro Printed on acid- free paper. ∞ Printed in the United States of America 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 This country will be drenched in blood. God only knows how it will all end. O, it is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! . You people speak so lightly of war. You don’t know what you are talking about. War is a terrible thing. You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peace- able people, but an earnest people, and will fight, too; and 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 anything it needs; you can make scarcely anything you need. You can’t make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. Yet 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 determina- tion are you prepared for war. In all else are you totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway; but as your limited re- sources begin to fail, and, shut out from the markets of Europe by blockades, as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop to think, they must see that in the end you will surely fail. — William Tecumseh Sherman (Boyd, “Gen. W. T. Sherman”) Christmas Eve, 1860 CONTENTS List of Maps ix preface xi Introduction 1 1 The Origins 13 2 The War’s Strategic Framework 36 3 “And the War Came” 65 4 First Battles and the Making of Armies 93 5 Stillborn between Earth and Water: The Unfulfilled Promise of Joint Operations 119 6 The Confederacy Recovers, 1862 167 7 The Confederate Counter- Offensives, 1862 205 8 The War in the East, 1863 250 9 The War in the West, 1863 293 10 The Killing Time: The War in the East, 1864 354 11 Victory in the West, 1864 415 12 The Collapse of the Confederacy 469 13 The Civil War in History 509 acknowLedgMents 549 notes 551 further reading 569 index 585 MAPS 1 Railroads 1850 and 1860 41 2 Continental Distances of the Confederacy 42 3 Border States 1860 75 4 Bull Run— Theater of Operations 106 5 Battle of First Bull Run, 21 July 1861 108 6 The War at Sea 121 7 Situation Prior to Henry and Donelson Campaign, January 1862 137 8 Union Advance and Capture of Fort Donelson, 1862 139 9 Strategic Situation after Fall of Forts Henry and Donelson 141 10 Union and Confederate Concentrations, 29 March 1862 148 11 Confederate Attack and Situation at End of First Day, 6 April 1862 151 12 Jackson’s Valley Campaign 175 13 Battle of Fair Oaks, 31 May 1862 179 14 Battle of Mechanicsville, 26 June 1862 183 15 Situation Late 29 June 1862 185 16 Movements Prior to Second Bull Run 193 17 Second Battle of Bull Run, 30 August 1862 201 18 Confederate Invasion of Kentucky, 14 August– 10 October 1862 211 19 Antietam Campaign, Situation 7 September 1862 222 20 Situation at Dawn, 17 September 1862 231 21 Fredericksburg, Situation about 1300, 13 December 1862 245 22 Chancellorsville Campaign, Situation Late 30 April and Movements since 27 April 1863 256 23 Chancellorsville, Situation Early 3 May 1863 264 24 Chancellorsville, Situation at 1700, 5 May 1863 267 25 Gettysburg Campaign, Situation on 24 June 1863 271 26 Gettysburg, Situation at 1430 1 July 1863 276 27 Gettysburg, Situation at 1530 2 July 1863 281 28 Gettysburg, Situation at 1430 and Pickett’s Charge 289 X | MAPS 29 Confederate Withdrawal from Kentucky and Maneuvering to Stones River 295 30 Battle of Stones River, 31 December 1862 297 31 Advance to Jackson 310 32 Grant’s Advance from Jackson to Vicksburg 317 33 Battle of Champion Hill, 16 May 1863 319 34 Situation 30 June and Movement since 24 June 329 35 Situation 15 August and Federal Advance 16– 30 August 1863 333 36 Battle of Chickamauga, Situation at 1130 341 37 Raccoon Mountain and Vicinity, 28 October 1863 348 38 Battle of Missionary Ridge, Situation 1530 Hours, 25 November 350 39 Grant’s Plan for 1864 Campaign 358 40 The Federal Advance from the Rapidan to North Anna 369 41 Wilderness and Spotsylvania, 7– 8 May 1864 375 42 Upton’s Attack, 10 May 1864 380 43 The Federal Advance from North Anna to Petersburg 391 44 Operations in the Shenandoah Valley 405 45 Northwest Georgia, the Road to Atlanta, 1864 427 46 The Battle of Ezra Church 439 47 Sherman’s Turning Movement, August 26 442 48 Franklin and Nashville Campaign, Movements 29 September to 26 November 1864 449 49 Sherman’s March to the Sea 462 50 Decisive Federal Campaigns, November 1864– April 1865 472 51 Appomattox Campaign, 29 March– 1 April 1865 495 PREFACE We have found ourselves interested in the American Civil War from our earliest readings in the past. And that fact explains much about how and why we came to write this book. Yet, the reader should under stand that this great war has not been the exclusive focus of our academic interests and writing. The elder of us has spent much of his career as a student of European strategic and academic history in the twentieth century, while taking time off to write a history of the Iran- Iraq War. The other is a student of American military history in the nineteenth century with a much wider perspective than just the military events that occurred between 1861 and 1865, and whose own dissertation advisors were originally trained as historians of the Ameri- can South— although both later became important Civil War scholars. Moreover, both of us have had extensive experience with the Ameri- can military, one as an officer and consultant, the other as a provincial advisor in Iraq. Moreover, both of us in our various careers as students and teachers at Yale found ourselves under the spell and writings of Don- ald Kagan and his examination of the Peloponnesian War and the brilliant account of that catastrophic war by that greatest of all stra- tegic historians, Thucydides. Our Athenian inspiration described his own war as “the greatest disturbance in the history of the Hellenes.”1 So too we believe that the Civil War was “the greatest disturbance in the history of the Americans” and for that reason deserves the closest attention of those who have inherited this great Republic. A SAVAGE WAR Introduction Why another history of a war that has so fascinated so many Ameri- cans and led to so much spilled ink over the century and a half since its ending? Quite simply, as with all great events, new perspectives continue to influence our understanding of the war that ripped apart the American Republic in the mid- nineteenth century. The Civil War combined an unprecedented movement and projection of military forces across a continent on a scale made possible by the Industrial Revolution with the psychic mobilization of two contending nations that the French Revolution had foreshadowed. It represented a mo- mentous change in the character of war from the conflicts of the previ- ous century and a half. Nevertheless, the American Civil War forms an integral element in the overall development of the Western way of war, influenced undoubtedly by the peculiarities of geography, poli- tics, economics, and intellectual perceptions that shaped the develop- ing nation at that time. Thus, one cannot judge the war as an exceptional event separate from the powerful influences of what was also occurring in Europe. Instead its American participants found themselves influenced by the wider patterns of social, political, and military revolutions that for a brief, short- lived period in history gave the Western world global dominance in terms of its military and strategic power. Despite the war’s revolutionary aspects, its belligerents, and, most importantly, its leaders, still faced the same inherent uncertainties in armed con- flict Thucydides would have recognized over two millennia before and which Clausewitz described as “friction” several decades before the American conflict. 2 | INTRODUCTION The far- reaching implications of that era of Western military domi- nance remain with us to this day, even as that supremacy has faded con- siderably since the end of the world wars.
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