CIVIL WAR 150 • READER #6 Contents The WAR at HOME Introduction by Stephanie McCurry . 3 Introduction by Stephanie McCurry George B. McClellan to William H. Aspinwall , September 26 , 1862 . 6 Jefferson Davis: from Address to the Mississippi Legislature, December 26 , 1862 . 7 Harper’s Weekly : The Reverse at Fredericksburg, December 27, 1862 . 11 William Parker Cutler: Diary, February 2 and 9, 1863 . 14 Clement L. Vallandigham: from Speech in Congress, February 23, 1863 . 16 William Henry Harrison Clayton to Nide and Rachel Pugh, March 26 , 1863 . 24 John B. Jones: Diary, April 2 –4, 1863 . 28 Harper’s Weekly : The Arrest of Vallandigham, May 30 , 1863 . 31 Abraham Lincoln to Erastus Corning and Others, June 12 , 1863 . 34 CIVIL WAR 150: Exploring the War and Its George Templeton Strong: Diary, Meaning Through the Words of Those Who Lived It July 13 –17, 1863 . 44 is a national public programing initiative designed to encourage Maria Lydig Daly: Diary, July 23, 1863 . 52 public exploration of the transformative impact and contested meanings Jonathan Worth to Jesse G. Henshaw, of the Civil War through primary documents and firsthand accounts. August 24 , 1863 . 55 John Paris: from Sermon Preached at Kinston, February 28 , 1864 . 57 The project is presented by Biographical Notes . 61 The Library of America Chronology . 66 Questions for Discussion . 69 in partnership with and is supported by a grant from Introduction Introduction, headnotes, and back matter copyright © 2013 by Literary Classics of the United States, Inc., New York, N.Y. Cover illustration: Lexington Avenue in flames, Civil War Draft Riots, New York City, 1863 .From the website of the Smithsonian’s Museum of THE WAR AT HOME American History, courtesy of The New York Public Library, Astor, Lenox and Tilden Foundations . ddressing the Mississippi legislature in December 1862 , George B. McClellan: Copyright © 1989 by Stephen W. Sears. Jefferson Davis expressed shock at the scale of the Jefferson Davis: Copyright © 1995 by Louisiana State University Press. A ongoing conflict. “I have been one of those,” he said, William Parker Cutler: Copyright © 1987 by Kent State University Press. William Henry Harrison Clayton: Copyright © 1998 by the University of Iowa “who, from the beginning, looked forward to a long and Press. Used by permission of the publisher. bloody war; but I must frankly confess that its magnitude has George Templeton Strong: Copyright © 1952 by Macmillan Publishing Company; exceeded my expectations.” Davis openly acknowledged that copyright renewed © 1980 by Milton Halsey Thomas. All rights reserved. the Confederacy’s resort to conscription earlier in the year, and Maria Lydig Daly: Copyright © 1962 by Funk and Wagnalls Company, Inc. the subsequent decision to grant exemptions to men who *** owned twenty or more slaves, had fueled class conflict: “It has been said that it exempts the rich from military service, and The readings presented here are drawn from The Civil War: Told By forces the poor to fight the battles of the country.” The Con - Those Who Lived It , an ongoing four-year, four-volume series pub - federate president also confessed surprise at the extent of the lished for the sesquicentennial of our nation’s most devastating con - Union’s commitment to the successful prosecution of the war, flict. Bringing together letters, diaries, speeches, newspaper accounts, admitting that the “enemy have displayed more power and poems, songs, military reports, and memoirs, The Civil War weaves energy and resources than I had attributed to them.” hundreds of pieces by scores of participants into a unique firsthand That Davis failed to anticipate the extraordinary Union com - record of events—as seen from North and South, in battle and at mitment of resources to the conflict is hardly surprising. But by home—from November 1860 to June 1865. It is being published by the end of 1862 the terrible toll of Union battlefield casualties, The Library of America, a nonprofit institution dedicated to preserv - continual military failure in the eastern theater, the controver - ing America’s best and most significant writing in handsome, endur - sial turn to slave emancipation, and the imminent prospect of a ing volumes, featuring authoritative texts. You can learn more about draft had many supporters of the Union cause worried about The Civil War , and about The Library of America, at www.loa.org . precisely the question addressed by Philadelphia lawyer Charles J. Stillé in his popular pamphlet How a Free People Conduct a For materials to support your use of this reader, and for an online exhibition of images and original documents from the Civil War, Long War . The end of the year found both the people and the visit: www.gilderlehrman.org/civilwar leadership of the Union and Confederacy alike struggling with a painful new recognition of the magnitude of the war. 1863 Civil War is made possible by the generous support of the would be a year of reckoning in both societies: in the Confed - National Endowment for the Humanities. eracy, over the consequences of conscription in a rural slave - holding republic and the legitimacy of the government’s The Library of America aggressively centralizing military policies; in the Union, over 14 East 60th Street the explosive mixture of emancipation and conscription and the New York, NY 10022 constitutionality of war measures so muscular they constituted, www.loa.org so critics said, a military despotism. 3 4 The War at Home Introduction 5 The parallels between the challenges faced by the two soci - necessity to adopt a draft law, the provisions of which, includ - eties at war should not be exaggerated: the extent of the mobi - ing the exemption of persons who paid a $ 300 commutation lization for war in the Confederacy and the extraordinary fee, increased class conflict in the North. In July 1863 deadly government efforts required to man, supply and feed its armies, rioting broke out in New York, a Democratic city, as white created levels of social hardship that far exceeded anything mobs lynched black men to protest forcing whites to serve in a experienced in the North. By 1863 the Confederate army virtu - war for slave emancipation. The violence revealed ethnic, racial, ally controlled the southern food supply, and with mobilization and political divisions in northern society. Like many Republi - rates reaching 75–85 percent of military age males in some areas, cans, George Templeton Strong blamed the riots on Irish the Confederate home front was stripped of white men. Even immigrants stirred up by anti-war Democrats, while Maria as slaveholding families refused to let the army requisition their Lydig Daly, like many Democratic supporters of the war, slaves and used exemption laws to keep their sons and husbands decried the mob’s cruelty while denouncing free blacks as at home, women and children from the Confederacy’s huge “insolent,” “immoral,” and “unbearable.” class of nonslaveholders (fully two-thirds of white households) Unlike in the Confederacy, political opposition to adminis - were left to eke out subsistence alone on the region’s many tration measures in the Union was channeled through (and small farms. In the spring of 1863 , as the Confederate War thus contained by) party lines. The Democratic Party Department warned of a food crisis so acute it threatened star - denounced the Emancipation Proclamation, the suspension of vation, a wave of food riots swept across the Confederacy from habeas corpus, and the draft as blatantly unconstitutional meas - Mobile, Alabama, to Richmond, Virginia. The riots were not ures that infringed civil and political liberty and accused the the result of a Yankee conspiracy, as some asserted, but were Lincoln administration of establishing a military dictatorship. organized by women drawn mostly from the ranks of impover - In February 1863 Democratic congressman Clement L. Val - ished soldiers’ wives. Combined with a peace movement that landigham warned that under the draft bill “the freedom of the flourished in North Carolina in the summer of 1863 , the food negro” would be purchased “at the sacrifice of every right of riots registered the dire conditions of everyday life in the Con - the white men of the United States.” Less than three months federacy and an increasing level of political dissent that took on later Vallandigham was convicted by a military commission of overtly class lines. With no formal party structure to channel “declaring disloyal sentiments and opinions” and expelled by opposition or rally support, the Davis administration held on, presidential order into Confederate-held territory. Lincoln attempting to work with state governors (some openly hostile) defended his treatment of civil liberty in wartime in a brilliantly to feed the population and impress slave labor for the military, written public letter and persisted in enforcing the draft after all the while diverting scarce military manpower to the violent the New York riots. In both North and South there proved to suppression of bands of deserters and unionist guerrillas. White be sufficient support for the war among soldiers and civilians for men subject to seizure by conscription officers accused their it to continue into 1864 . How long that support could be main - government of treating them as if they were slaves, and, indeed, tained during a presidential election in the North and unprece - the level of centralized coercive power required to wage the dented Union offensives in the South remained an open Confederate war starkly contradicted the state rights’ principles question. on which the slaveholders’ republic had been built. Matters were very different in the Union, where the Lincoln Stephanie McCurry administration forged highly effective relationships with indus - Christopher H. Browne Distinguished Professor of History, trialists and Wall Street financiers, most people were spared real University of Pennsylvania hardship, and a huge army was initially raised and sustained on a voluntary basis.