In case you didn’t have either time or the inclination to read any of the optional articles Mr. Stewart listed on Edmodo, here is a summary of the first one, an eight page article by William Murray, What Took the North So Long.
In his article, Murray argues that the length of the war had “less to do with the supposed superiority” of the Confederate troops and generals than it did with the “formidable strategic complexities that the North’s leadership so brilliantly overcame”, although they took a while to do so.
While, some emphasize the incompetence of Northern generals on the eastern front, Murray claims that the shortcomings of the Southern generals on the western front more than made up for it. Similarly, he states that the rank and file soldiers of both sides were about equally matched.
Murray emphasizes instead the “complexities of modern war”. The Civil War was the first of its kind, a modern war such as this had never been fought, and thus there was no precedent set on how to fight in such a war. In the North, they had few experienced officers to train their men, and the few they did have were “not used to the best advantage”. The South, however, “spread [those with experience] through the newly formed state regiments”, where they were able to “provide an example to others”.
The first year of the war, Murray states, was primarily focused on raising and equipping an army with the “strategic and political requirements” demanded by the war. New innovations in weaponry had changed warfare, with an increased musket range that rendered Napoleonic tactics invalid. The soldiers and officers of the Civil War had to gain experience through “learning on the battlefield”.
The initial plan of the Federal army was the Anaconda Plan, which did not have the momentum nor the support to subdue the South. Not only did they have to outlast the Southern soldiers, the Union had to “break the will of the population”. This fact, however was not understood by the leadership in the beginning, and so the war was off to a slow start.
Lincoln and Grant, Murray says, saw early on that a “concerted, concurrent Union effort in all theaters would be required to break the… Confederate resistance”. Eventually Grant was elevated to commander of all the Union armies, and was able to put this into practice, and turn the tide of the war.
At the onset of the war, Murray argues, neither the “strategic vision nor the military capacity to win the war existed”, so it is no wonder that the war lasted for far longer than many critics suggested at its beginning. Murray proposes that the true question is not why the North took so long, but how the leaders of the Union were “able to see it through to its successful conclusion”.
I like your summary of the article; it was clear, concise and easy to follow. It also raised some very good reasons as to why the North hadn't won the war in such a short time despite their huge advantage. Nice work!
ReplyDeleteThanks for the great summary! Something I can't help but wonder: if the Union public had been so adamant about moving "on to Richmond" at the beginning of the war and the Union gov't had pressed on with the Anaconda Plan, would the Union still have won, and would the war have been far less costly (in terms of money and lives) than it was? I guess there's no way to know for sure.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the summary, Elise! I wonder, however, what would have happened if the Anaconda plan would have been used; would the War have ended sooner and both the Union and Confederacy suffer less casualties? (As posed by Maya) I understand that the Anaconda plan may hurt conciliation efforts with the Confederacy, but I think in the long run it would have saved the Union more valuable resources and it would have saved many Confederate lives. Looking at how the way the War turned out, I can see that the end of the War was very chivalrous only because the two forces fought valiantly; if the Anaconda Plan had been used the war may have been prolonged.
ReplyDeleteYes, but would prolonging the War have solved the problem? If the war had been short and decisive, the North might have been inclined to forget, as it had previously, the grievances of battle. Because the Civil War was so long and bloody, people on both sides remembered not only the causes of the war, but the consequences. The war was imprinted in their minds, and nobody wanted another bloody war full of more casualties. Both sides had lost enough to be tired of the war - and this is probably what kept the peace. Had the North not exhausted the South, they would have kept rebelling until they were finally quelled, which might have led to even more casualties, another prolonged war, or even a completely different outcome. While I'm not saying that the casualties were completely necessary, exactly, I think they were not in vain, and that in the end the extent of the casualties of the war served to make an impression upon the American people that still makes an impact today.
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