The Leaders
Negro slavery shall be recognized and protected.
Constitution of the Confederate States of America
When Abraham Lincoln was elected as the sixteenth president of the United States, he had been active as a politician for some years and had been elected to office several times before the Republican Party chose him as their candidate. Lincoln had been involved in the formation of the party itself, and became the first Republican to hold the office of president. Lincoln had always been open about his opposition to slavery, and with an antislavery president, the South feared that slavery would be abolished entirely.
When Lincoln was announced as the Republican candidate for president, Southern politicians declared that they would not stand for it if he was elected. They were certain that his first act as president would be to outlaw slavery. They threatened secession, separating them from the newly formed nation. Lincoln was duly voted into office on 6 November 1860, and the State of South Carolina voted to secede from the Union less than two months later, on 20 December, leading the way for ten more states that would join them to form the Confederate States of America.
With martial law in place, Kentucky was unable to join the South and instead declared neutrality in May, while a portion of Virginia that disagreed with the secessionist decision opted to form the State of West Virginia and remain with the Union while the rest of the state became part of the Confederacy.
On 4 February 1861, the states that had seceded came together to form a provisional government and adopt a constitution that was very similar to the United States Constitution, but that clearly protected slavery and the rights of slaveholders. They also elected a president for their new confederacy.
Jefferson Finis Davis was a West Point graduate and a Mississippi planter. When war came, he was serving as a United States Senator and announced to the US Senate that Mississippi would be withdrawing from the Union. He was in attendance at the convention in Montgomery, Alabama, hoping to be given a command in the Confederate States army. Instead, he was elected provisional president of the Confederate States of America. Following a general election, the citizens of the South opted to keep Davis in office. Elected for a six-year term, he would be the first, last and only president of the Confederacy.
The Generals
Save in the defense of my native State, I never desire again to draw my sword.
General Robert E. Lee, 20 April 1861
Lincoln realized that the nation was about to tear itself in half. He felt that secession was unconstitutional and refused to recognize the Confederate States of America as a separate country. He was determined to prevent the division of the country and the only way to do that was war. To fight a war, he needed an army. The United States Military Academy at West Point, New York held a reputation for providing the country’s military with officers whose education was focused on warfare, and many of the officers on both sides of the conflict were graduates of the prestigious school.
Although not a West Point graduate, Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott was a commanding general of the Armies of the United States when war came. In spite of failing health, he managed to supervise recruitment and training to build up the army in order to wage war with the South. But Scott knew he would eventually have to step down and told Lincoln that he wanted a man named Robert Edward Lee (pictured below) as his top commander.
Robert E. Lee
Lee, originally from Virginia, was a career officer in the United States army. In private, he criticized the South, referring to secession as rebellion, and although a slaveholder himself, Lee supported his wife, Mary Custis Lee, in her efforts to benefit African-Americans, which included funding an illegal school for slaves at Arlington Plantation. Their plantation sat just across the Potomac River from Washington DC.
Lee’s personal opinions left him in a difficult position when he was offered the command of the Union army with the rank of major general. He knew that his home state of Virginia would follow the slave states and opt for secession. Lee’s loyalties were divided, but he could not bring himself to raise his hand against his own people. And so, after thirty-two years as an officer who had distinguished himself in the United States army, Robert E. Lee resigned in order to take command of the Confederate forces in Virginia. Like many graduates of the prestigious academy, Lee would find himself riding alongside fellow alumni while facing other West Pointers across a battlefield.
Lincoln’s priority was to hold the Union together by whatever means necessary, and he was constantly searching for the general who would end the war quickly. After the Union defeat at the First Battle of Bull Run (First Manassas), Winfield Scott’s health forced him to resign. On 1 November 1861, he was replaced by General George B. McClellan.
McClellan was another West Point graduate who had shown great promise. He had raised and trained the Army of the Potomac when political pressure forced Lincoln to retire Scott and replace him with McClellan. But he fell far short of Lincoln’s expectations. McClellan tended to spend too much time planning and preparing, to the point where the opportunity to face the enemy had passed by. He was accused of not being aggressive enough on the battlefield. McClellan and Lincoln’s dislike for one another didn’t help matters. Finally, on 11 March 1862, McClellan was relieved as general-in-chief of the Union army and returned to his command of the Army of the Potomac. For the remainder of the spring of 1862, Lincoln and a group of officers that he referred to as the ‘War Board’ directed military operations.
It was 23 July 1862 before Lincoln finally named a replacement for McClellan. Major General George Henry W. Halleck was another graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Halleck was known as a scholar and had earned the nickname ‘Old Brains’. Unfortunately, his strengths lay in administration rather than planning strategy and commanding troops. It was less than a year before Lincoln replaced Halleck.
This time Lincoln seemed to have found the right man for the job. Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant had graduated from the United States Military Academy in 1843, but when the American Civil War began, he was a civilian. He went back to the army and was named a colonel in June 1861 and promoted to brigadier general in August that same year.
Grant was popular with his men, but not with other officers. Military promotions had become a political game, one that Grant didn’t fit well with. He was known to ride through camp in a private’s fatigue blouse (a uniform jacket), he drank too much, and most officers said he always seemed to be in a foul temper. But Grant got the job done. He set out to break the Confederate ranks and end the war and that’s what he did.
The War at Sea
In spite of his limited experience of the military, Abraham Lincoln realized early in the war the importance of strategy and planning. He needed a plan of action to defeat the South and keep the states unified. Before his retirement, his general-in-chief, Brevet Lieutenant General Winfield Scott came up with a plan that was initially discarded by McClellan in favour of his own plan. But a series of moves on the part of the Union ended with the same results Scott had hoped for.
Scott’s basic concept was twofold. Firstly, Union ships would blockade Confederate harbours along the east coast. This would not only cut off trade and supplies, but would mean fewer lives lost than in a pitched battle. Secondly, Scott proposed sending troops down the Mississippi to capture key towns and take control of the river. It was this wrapping around and squeezing of the South that gave his strategy its name: the ‘Anaconda Plan’.
In order to blockade Southern ports, steam-powered vessels would be required. This presented a problem. The ships were fueled by coal, and would spend more time returning to port for refueling than they would guarding the Southern harbours. The solution was to find a port that the Union navy could take command of and where they could resupply their ships with coal.
USS Cairo on