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Human Rights  » Writing the Civil War, the why and how it was fought

Writing the Civil War, the why and how it was fought

America has always approached its conflicts as if extending the

thought of the uniquely American way of life, that is to say as

if to leave each man to his own devices and choices free to make

or break his own way into life as he has been endowed by his

creator. National defense, up until the advent of the Second

World War was something for a small national army to attend to.

The American Civil War was fought not by professional armies but

by armies filled with patriots who answered the call of their

respective side and put aside all personal want or gain for the

larger call of defending their nation. As a historian and

writer, I've collected some of my knowledge and research into

this article to aid fellow writers in their desires to write

short stories and novels set in the Civil War.

Why we fought

Reasons for volunteering are as varied as the individuals who

fought. They can however be broken down into one of several

categories and these can be considered as typical for the

majority of soldiers on both sides of the war.

At the start of the war, patriotism was the primary reason

hundreds of thousands gathered at town meetings, churches, court

houses, and post offices to hear speeches, calls for patriotism,

and opportunities for adventure. Volunteers on both sides of the

Mason Dixon line saw the other in terms of five decades of

sectional tensions and propaganda. For the typical northerner,

the southern states that one by one voted to secede from the

Union were traitors, rebelling against the lawful and legitimate

government in Washington. Slavery was considered "that peculiar

institution" by the typical volunteer and the cause of the

tensions politically, and an otherwise inconsequential issue to

the greater problem of the break up of the country along

sectional lines. The call for volunteers was more often made for

the restoration of the country than for the end of slavery.

Depending on where one hailed from, the ardor for restoration

vs. the abolitionist call for slavery's end was proportionate to

what state or region one lived.

New England states, with a long history and the first to end

slavery after colonization tended to be more Abolitionist in

sentiment. Wealth also played a part, the wealthy tending

towards abolitionism as well as restoration of the Union over

just for restoration. Western soldiers tended to be a little

more restoration oriented and less concerned for slavery as an

institution. No matter what state one lived in, it is clear from

letters home and biographical information that the majority of

soldiers volunteered for restoring the Union, only a minority

having any philosophical qualms about the south and its slaves.

After the Emancipation Proclamation, desertions in the Federal

army rose and attributed to the change in what many thought was

the unacceptable shift in the war's direction. Obviously, those

that deserted where another minority, the majority not caring

enough about the change or accepting it as the normal

consequence of the goal of victory and restoration of the Union

to see the job through.

For the typical southerner, the protection of "the sacred soil"

and the right to choose ones destiny motivated them to

volunteer. Again, for the southern soldier, the fight to keep

slavery as an institution was less a question of if it where

right or not to keep a human in bondage, but the threat that the

federal government would swoop down and dictate policy and

society to a sovereign state was unacceptable. Knowing that the

Union would not countenance the rebellion, southern strategy was

based upon the defense - hoping that they could outlast the

federal assaults and ware them down, a victory achieved by

buying time and concessions. Having fewer resources and half the

population, this was the only course to take. Accordingly,

volunteers were drummed up by appealing to the manly virtue of

protecting ones hearth and home from the hordes of northern

hirelings and foreigners. It is fairly common knowledge that

only a small percentage of the southern population owned even

one slave. Again, the decades of sectional conflict had created

a mutual distrust of the motives of either side, and the average

southern soldier only saw the threat of northern aggression.

When South Carolina signed the ordinance of secession, the

opportunity to express the pent up frustration at the economic,

social, and political siege the south felt it had been under

since the 1840's was realized. Although a majority felt for the

Union even afterwards, states like Virginia where politicians

successfully voted against drawing up an ordinance of secession

even after Ft. Sumter was fired upon, changed their minds when

Lincoln called for the 90 day volunteers to put down the

rebellion. Reasoning that it was better to stand with the other

states on the concept of states rights than to allow a federal

army to march on its soil, Virginia became one of the last

states to vote to secede.

The average southern soldier, if asked why he volunteered would

have stated that he fought to protect his home, which in many

cases was literal. The famous Stonewall brigade spent most of

the war fighting in its backyard in the Shenandoah Valley. He

would have had little to say about slavery, other than his

belief that no one had the right to dictate to him how to live

his life or how.

How it was fought

Like any organization, an army will not stay static. The Union

armies, more so than the confederate army, went through numerous

reorganizations. Depending on what time period being considered

for a story the military situation will be different based on

early war, mid war, and late war.

Both sides came from a common military tradition, a common

military training from West Point, and their leaders had served

with one another in the Mexican war and in the westward

expansions and Indian conflicts. Having this commonality, the

way regiments were raised on both sides where practically the

same and both armies went through similar transitions as they

grew.

Recruiting for the volunteer regiments on both sides followed

similar lines. In the North, each state was given a quota of men

to fill into regiments after Lincoln's call for ninety day

volunteers. The Governors of each state commissioned well to do

politicians and retired or current military men to raise

regiments. These men then would then build a staff of lower

ranking officers and send them out to recruit from the counties

enough men to fill a company. The typical scene would be a town

meeting, where patriotic speeches and music would rouse the

fervor of those in attendance and names would be taken down for

muster, a time and place being designated as the muster point.

Seldom would one find a permanent recruiters point in any

location, recruiting taking place sporadically. The philosophy

at the time held that men who knew one another were more apt to

serve with distinction than with total strangers. The United

States had a long history of raising volunteer units in times of

crises, and this more than anything lead to how units were

raised in the civil war. The federal government still maintained

active recruiting for the regular army, but the majority of

soldiers who fought were three year volunteers who fought in

regiments raised by the member states, which maintained their

unique identity throughout the war, and were mustered out at its

end.

Once the company had been recruited, the practice of electing

company officers took place, although this was not a uniform

practice, this would remain the identifying trademark of all

volunteer units and point of contention at times between the

regular officers who had to command them. The companies thus

recruited would then be marched to a central location in the

state to be united with their sister companies and designated as

a regiment of the state. Taking the oath of federal service was

the last act that would officially take the volunteers into the

army.

Being virtually identical in the south, there is no need to

describe a southern vs. northern way of recruiting. The south

also maintained a regular army though again, the majority of its

soldiers served in volunteer units. Though the confederate

regular army regiments never were developed to the size of the

federal standing army, they did see service in several battles.

There was a big difference in the way both sides treated the

need for more men. On the Federal side, the states chose to

raise more regiments instead of sending men to fill the

vacancies in the current units. Though all units occasionally

sent officers back home to recruit for the regiment, the need

for manpower was usually acute in the existing units. At times

units would be combined with others from the same state as they

became too small to function on their own.

In the confederacy, as time went on and a unit's attrition

whittled it down, recruits would be raised from the state that

raised the regiment to fill the vacancies.

Another difference between the two sides was the use of bounties

and the draft. The confederacy never could levee a draft, the

constitution ratified that created the confederation of southern

states would not allow a strong central control over the

constituent states, which at times created the situation where a

state could and often did withhold vital resources in material

and manpower claiming the sovereignty of the state as the

excuse. In the north however, the draft and bounty created

several problems for the regiments in the field. Men raised by

bounty, whose motivation was purely money, often proved

themselves to be poor soldiers, where more likely to desert and

in general were of poor quality. Regiments whose numbers where

bolstered by bounty men often saw their effectiveness in combat

fall. The other factor was that the bounty men often lowered the

unit's morale. The draft, the last resort of the federal

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government, brought an even lower quality to the manpower sent

to the regiments. For the men who had volunteered to preserve

the union, who had survived from the beginning of the war, the

advent of the bounty men and the practice of avoiding duty by

sending a replacement after the draft left many feeling that

their sacrifice and the sacrifice of those that had died had

been cheapened.

Organization

The primary organization throughout the war was the brigade. The

brigade was made up of from three to five regiments of infantry.

Early in the war, brigades also had a constituent artillery

battery assigned to it. This however was then moved to the

division structure to be allocated as needed although brigades

and batteries often still fought next to one another. The

organization into divisions for both sides followed the battle

of Bull Run.

Division The use of divisions in army structure was the next

form of organization. The division would consist of from two to

four brigades and supporting cavalry and artillery units

attached. Cavalry for the federals were not used in organic

structures until mid war, unlike the confederacy which used

larger cav forces. The division became the primary means of

command and control as the war progressed. Although a soldiers

primary loyalty usually lay within his regiment or brigade, the

division would be the primary means of moving forces about on

the battle filed. Corps The corps structure would not see use

until after Fredericksburg for the Federal army. Joseph Hooker

would re-organize the Army of the Potomac into Corps and assign

each a singular badge of recognition, knowing that eventually

this badge would not only be a means of identifying a unit on

the field, but also a badge of honor and pride for the rank and

file. Each division with in the Corps, usually from two to

three, would have a specific color to their badge, thus again

identifying them further in organization.

The confederates did not adopt a similar structure and their

Corps and division were usually larger in compliment than their

federal counter parts.

Army It would then stand to reason that an army would be made up

of between two to five Corps. There did not seem to be any hard

and fast rule for the organization of armies and how many corps

would make up each. Location of manpower and other resources

usually was the deciding factor. The Army of the Potomac at

times numbered up to one hundred thousand men at times, while

other armies would maybe number twenty to sixty thousand. Area

of the country also played a part in where one served. Due to

transportation limitations and the need to cover a large front,

the Union armies tended to be divided by east and west. Those

from western states, with the notable exception of the Iron

Brigade and a smattering of other western units who found

themselves in the East, usually stayed in the west. The same

held true for eastern units with the exception of the two Corps

who were sent west after Rosecrans was defeated at Chickamauga

to break the siege of Chattanooga. These two Corps then stayed

in the west and participated in the March to the sea under

Sherman.

Due to the constant state of flux that the armies underwent,

choosing a unit to place your characters will depend on the time

period. Early war, your unit would belong to a brigade denoted

by the officer in command of that brigade, i.e. Hatcher's

brigade, Sherman's brigade, etc. Mid war, the division and army

would be the identifying marks, and mid to late war, the corps

belonged to. If writing about Bull Run, or Fredericksburg, or

the Seven Days battles, you would not have a Corps structure, as

all of these battles took place between 1861 and 1862.

Although Corps and Divisions had numbers on paper in an armies

organization chart, they were referred to in orders and other

documentation by the leader in command. Regiments kept their

state designations, but brigades and divisions went by the

leaders. Artillery batteries also went by the commander, often

being designated by both the battery state of origins and the

leader's name. Cavalry units kept their state designations. This

held true on both sides. Armies on the other hand, kept the same

designations. Federal armies went by the principle water ways

that they were organized in or primarily served in. Confederate

armies went by the states they served in or were organized in.

Some armies changed names over time as they were organized then

re-organized.

©2005 by Phil Bryant

About the author:

Phil Bryant is a Systems administrator for a Fortune 500 company

and a writer/actor/director of numerous locally produced stage

plays and shorter dramas. Phil recieved his Bachelors of Arts in

History from the University of New Mexico. Phil is an author on

a site for writers http://www.Writing.Com/ and his portfolio can

be visited at http://phil1861.Writing.Com/.