i The Fortunes of War: Confederate Expansionist Ambitions During the American Civil War Adrian Robert Brettle Charlottesville, Virginia B.A., University of Cambridge, 1994 M.A., University of Cambridge, 1998 A Dissertation presented to the Graduate Faculty of the University of Virginia in Candidacy for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of History University of Virginia Conferred May, 2014 ii © Copyright by Adrian Robert Brettle All Rights Reserved May 2014 iii Abstract Southern and then Confederate politicians and business leaders possessed and implemented expansionist ambitions during the Civil War Era from State Secession in late 1860 until the final collapse of the Confederacy in the first half of 1865. The Confederacy exhibited both formal ambition in the desire to annex additional territory and informal expansion through either a pursuit of commercial exploitation or fostering the fragmentation of neighboring states. Although the pursuit of expansion was integral to the formation of mid-nineteenth century nation states, for southerners, the experience of both secession and of fighting a war acted as a stimulant for such ambitions. I chart these ambitions held for the Confederacy in terms of slavery expansion, the nature of its future international relations, commercial growth and territorial extent. I have identified numerous leading individuals−planters, farmers, lawyers, merchants, politicians and soldiers−who both held these opinions and sought to persuade others. I track the opinions and actions of these persons throughout the war, and demonstrate that these aspirations changed over time, as did the resulting measures taken at the time by Government and businesses to achieve their ultimate fulfillment. The objective of my research is to build up an understanding of the postwar expectations, held during the war, of Confederates located across the Confederacy itself, the Border States and stationed abroad. Therefore I consulted a range of printed and manuscript sources at archives across the U.S. The breadth of my research enables me to prove that expansionist ambitions varied across the Confederacy together with demonstrating that policy enacted in Richmond was often the result of intense lobbying from the provinces. The result is to show the Civil War in its true wider context, that the iv participants at the time consistently saw its outcome as a Confederate nation with international and even global implications. At the same time, the nature of the planned country changed, according to the progress of the Civil War. The pursuit of expansion was certainly both a rhetorical and nostalgic exercise, but it was also a practical part of nation building and preeminently important for a new country dependent on slavery. v Acknowledgements The debts accumulated during the completion of this dissertation are large. Family and friends have helped enormously. My parents, Harvey and Lindsay Brettle, backed my decision to choose an academic career without reserve. Both my brothers, Oliver and Linton Brettle, courageously volunteered to serve as readers (and their offer was accepted). David Eisenberg has been of great help and encouragement. Dick Crampton provided last minute reading assistance on the dissertation. While Chris Payne and Nadia Ziyadeh were instrumental in getting me to seriously think about going back to school and Chris has gone on to be a loyal reader of this dissertation, I am so grateful. I have been fortunate to have had excellent teachers and mentors. Gary W. Gallagher has provided unstinting support from choosing the topic until the completion of the dissertation. I have also benefited from the time, advice and encouragement of Michael Holt, Peter Onuf and Elizabeth Varon. Other history department faculty at the University of Cambridge, the University of Virginia and elsewhere have helped me understand the field and whether they realize it or not, this project. These people include Brian Balogh, Sir David Cannadine, Jon Parry, Brendan Simms, Paul Halliday, John Stagg, Joseph Kett, the late Clive Trebilcock, the late Mark Kaplanoff, Boyd Hilton, Max Edelson, Elizabeth Brown Pryor, Joan Waugh, Philip Zelikow, Paul and Adrienne Kershaw. Finally, I thank Karen Chase; from her English Department class on Charles Dickens I learnt the importance of ambition to the mid-nineteenth century mind. Some aspects of this dissertation have been presented at various conferences and in other forums. I thank Phil Williams, Barbara Wright, Sandy von Thelen, Trice Taylor, Bryan Hagan, Robert May, Robert Bonner, Sir Richard Carwardine, Jay Sexton, Brian vi Schoen, Bruce Levine, Alan Taylor, Glenna Matthews, Adam Arenson, Daniel Lynch, Edward Rugemer, Matthew Karp, Thomas Schoonover, Howard Jones, Paul Quigley, Aaron Sheehan-Dean, Hugh Dubrelle, Amanda Foreman, C. Wyatt Evans, David Gleeson, Simon Keith Lewis, David Brown, Jeremy Black, Mary Warnement, Frances Pollard, Glenn Crothers, and many others for their suggestions and encouragement. The dissertation could not have been completed without the fellowships, grants and assistantships I have been lucky to be awarded. The Lee-Jackson Foundation bestowed on me an Archibald Craig Fellowship for my first year at the University of Virginia. Subsequently I have benefited from support from the University of Virginia history department and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. The dissertation would not have been possible without research grants from the International Center for Jefferson Studies, the Boston Athenaeum, the Virginia Historical Society, the Filson Historical Society, the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the Huntington Library, the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History at the University of Texas, Austin, and the North Caroliniana Society. I also thank the library staff both at these institutions and especially at the Special Collections Library at the University of Virginia for their patience and guidance. Finally, several colleagues assisted in this project. Chief among them are Will Kurtz, Emily Seinfeld, and Rhonda Barlow who have been willing readers and editors, I have also repeatedly profited from the vibrant discussion and constructive suggestions of both the Early American Seminar and Civil War Group at the University of Virginia. I thank all of the many participants over the last six years, particularly Mike Caires, Jon Greenspan, Nic Wood, Whitney Martinko, Peter Luebke, David Flaherty, Randy Lewis Flaherty, Billy Wayson, and Adam Dean who have helped me on my way. vii Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: “The Destiny of Empire”: How leading Immediate Secessionists in late 1860 and early 1861 tried to counter the appeal of the Union. 19 Chapter 2: “Demanding the Powers of Expansion” February to April 1861 71 Chapter 3: “The Necessity of Continuing or Extending” April 1861 to February 1862 113 Chapter 4: “Duty or Destiny”: Confederate Expansionist Ambitions in 1862 167 Chapter 5: "Weal or Woe": Confederate Expansionist Ambitions in 1863 229 Chapter 6: “The Bulwark Against Tyranny”: the Conservative Confederacy, January to the fall of 1864 289 Chapter 7: “Between Revolution and Survival”: the Choking of Confederate Expansionist Ambitions, November 1864 - May 1865. 349 Conclusion: What Are You Going to Do? 409 List of Abbreviations 423 Bibliography 424 1 Introduction to “The Fortunes of War”: Confederate Expansionist Ambitions in the American Civil War 2 “All we ask is to be let alone”, declared President Jefferson Davis in his Message to Congress on April 29, 1861. To that end, Confederates fought a war for independence that they not only lost, but it also killed slavery. Confederates struggled to maintain a contest that stretched across four years and achieved, albeit in part due to slavery, mobilization rates and sustained casualty levels that remain unheard of in a democracy. “The Fortunes of War” focuses on what Confederates intended to do once they had been let alone, which was to grow their nation both commercially and territorially. Confederates possessed expansionist ambitions in part because such aspirations were inherent in the mid-nineteenth century Atlantic World. Expansion came naturally to notions of the competitive system of international relations, political economy, nation building, and the cult of progress and pursuit of perfection. Keen believers in these ideas and reinforced by their faith, secessionists and Confederates regarded expansion as even more of a prerequisite for their latecomer nation, which had been both endowed with the responsibility of slavery and buoyed by the production of vast quantities of staple crops. This work is above all a study of how secessionists and Confederates continued to pursue these expansionist ambitions in wartime, sustained by their commitment to a revolution and constantly adjusting to changing circumstances of the American Civil War.1 Expansion in “The Fortunes of War” meant both territorial and commercial growth of the Confederate nation and its economy. Confederates wished to expand in the traditional sense of annexing neighboring lands. Conscious of a need to build alliances in order to compete against the United States, they also when necessary sought to play down this potentially aggressive behavior in favor of more covert forms of expansion – 1 Jefferson Davis, “Message to Congress” April 29, 1861, JDC, 5:84. 3 fostering the fragmentation of neighboring states or weak indigenous regimes. Confederates also pursued expansion commercially. They wished to prevent competitors growing