The Confederacy was About Slavery

I'd like to see some reference material making this point. I've never run across this idea before.

Thanks for the clue on that.

Without an atmosphere to breathe air there wouldnt have been a Civil War either .....prove the cause, not some bullshit link .

Lovely . Masturbation was never spoken of so eloquently . I suppose the War of Independence was about human rights . I suppose the Cold War was about freeing the people of Russia . I suppose the Indian Wars were about freeing native people from nature's hardship . I suppose WWII was about freeing the Jews .

If you want to brainwash yourself about what a lovely people you are fine, but wars are fought for power and money . Not freeing other people....where are your troops in Africa ? Ever fought a war there to free black people ?

Oh bloody codswallop.....was the war successful by those standards ?

Awwww....and the Lion will lay down with the lamb....but if the lamb has half a functioning brain it will be scared shitless.....power and money are the causes of war and they end when those aims have been fulfilled or negated .

What happened to freeing Poland in WWII ? Everybody started whistling and drawing circles in the sand with their big toe and pretended to forget what started the war .

You cant think, period . You have been brainwashed that you are a nice person and of course you went along with it . You will never make an historian until you develop an ability to think for yourself and not believe propaganda simply because it is home grown .

Jesus, how many of you clowns actually believe you are God's gift to civilisation ? You fought your bloodiest war to free people.....awwww....thats so sweet !

I used to enjoy reading your posts Ionus. Not any more. You've become a rude, angry jerk. I won't be addressed the way you're talking to me. I've never said one unkind thing to you.
Frankly, you're an embarrassment to every Australian posting here and the Ozzies are one great group; I'll say that.
I just wish you'd go back to being the interesting, knowledgeable, polite guy I used to interact with.

Those criticisms were directed at the author of what you pasted .

I will endeavour to find some . In general it fits in with the way the North wanted to wage the war . They didnt want a quick military victory, they wanted to bleed the south . The north had more men and the longer the war went on the more damage it would do to the south so they didnt have to repeat the process . If it was about slavery, they could have stopped as soon as they reached an agreement, they could have had a less bloody strategy .

In fairness to MysteryMan (a fellow vet of yours, btw, he just doesn't know your background) he never claimed niceties in any war. I've no pretension to improving on the historical (thank Aidan for making the distinction between historic and historical, few here observe it) knowledge of most posters here.

But unlike those who've never bothered to read Gen. Sherman's Memoirs (written while the general was in terminal pain and suffering from invasive cancer, but soldiering on in order to be able to leave the publisher's fee to his wife - he died the day after the manuscript was delivered) I tried to learn from it:

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/4361/4361-h/p4.htm

You can read the entire text free on this link. It's sobering - and majestic; and while I broadly agree with you that all wars are fought for power and money, in this case there was another element, the preservation and creation of a new nation. I also don't believe anyone white genuinely cared for the black man - some ecclesiastical folk and assorted do-gooders excepted - but slavery seemed to be in the way of the new nation's world supremacy, so it had to go.

I also have to add, Panzade, that if I have offended you I sincerely apologise . War is an emotive issue for me and having people believe lies because they are well worn does not help . On reflection, I should have made it clear the criticisims were very pointedly at the author you quoted, and not at you or your opinion.....which incidentally, I do strongly disagree with .

There is a strong trend to teach favourable history to the audience.....Japanese are very ignorant of Japanese war crimes, though this may be slowly changing....Germans are too aware of their war crimes, to the point of letting other nations such as the USA and other european nations off the hook in WWII . For example, at D Day, Canadian troops cut the throats of captured "german" (probably Ukranian) troops in revenge for Dieppe but none of the victims or the perpetrators had been there .

If we are to learn and not make the same mistakes again history has to be served ice cold . I have been called lots of things by others in this thread for trying to tell the truth behind the facts . That is not helpful .

There was not only concern about "wage further war" as applying to that time but also in the immediate future after the war was won....any junior strategist could see the South would not be capable of fighting a prolonged war.....but after recovery, it may have considered secession again.....it was necessary to stop secessionist thinking as thoroughly as possible . None of which would have been necessary if it had of been about slavery .

I assume it was Ionus who asked this question (apparently an effort to secure it as arhetorical point).
The march to the Sea was a very big calculated gamble on the part of Grant and Sherman. I cant see how it had anything to do with recession after the ar, especially since the Federals were very busy still fighting THIS WAR. This campaign and th Carolinas and the Valley and Appomattox campaigns were where several armies were split up with the idea to coalsece at some later date and at a point to achieve the end of the war
SHerman, and Grant were to meet up in APril 65 in the upper Va Valley to end the war in a campaign that started at Rocky Face Ridge (for Sherman) in MAy 64 and ended at Goldsboro NC where he blocked Johnston from Hooking up with Lee (the two armies surrendered 5 days apart and many people say that the surrender of Johnston was the end of the Civil War

. The "strategy" of a reemergent South wasnt in anything Ive ever read anywhere. So, I too would like to read such material Even if it were so, I dont see the contradiction in the issue that slavery was the key reason of the Confederacy or the war. If Ise Ionus Id read J D Cox's volumes on the campaigns of the Civil War. "The MArch to the Sea" was one of the volumes and its a scholarly read full of original "no agenda" material.

TheAtlanta campign and the "March to the Sea" were accomplishing the destruction of military objectives. and much of the march was a feint. However SHerman did need provisioning (they had been beginning to "live off the land" so Schofields capture of Wilmington NC Ft Fisher, Anderson and New Bern were set up just for provisioning from the sea.

PErhaps youve heard of the term "Unconditional Surrender" .
"Further War" could also mean the lingering campaign and stringing out of the present one. Why make things so convoluted?? This is so much "quote mining"

Sherman's "March to the Sea," and his subsequent campaign to punish South Carolina by inflicting wanton destruction on that state not only did not do material military damage to the South, it was an abdication of his responsibility to the 1864-65 campaign.

In late 1864, there were only two large, coherent armies left in the South. Those were the Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of Tennessee. Meade and the Army of the Potomac had trapped the Army of Northern Virginia into a defense of Richmond, and by extention, of Petersburg.

The Army of Tennessee, while commanded by Joseph Johnston, had conducted a brilliant tactical and strategic retreat against the armies commanded by Sherman (the Army of the Tennessee--not to be confused with the Confederate Army of Tennessee--and portions of the Army of Ohio and the Army of the Cumberland, taken from George Thomas' command). This was not the way southerners wanted their war conducted, though, and Johnston was relieved and replaced with the largely militarily clueless John Bell Hood. Hood's first act upon reaching his command was to launch a series of bloody and futile attacks on Sherman's command around Atlanta. It accomplished nothing useful from the Confederate point of view, but it helped Shermann immensely--it delivered Atlanta into his hands much more quickly, and at a fraction of the cost he would have paid to take it away from Joe Johnston.

So, that was the point at which Meade had the Army of Northern Virginia to destroy, and Sherman had the Army of Tennessee to destroy. It was also the point at which Sherman simply abandoned his responsibility entirely and set out "to make Georgia howl."

After the debacle of Chickamauga, George Thomas had taken command of Rosecrans' former army, an amalgam of the Army of Ohio and the Army of the Cumberland. Grant and Sherman has shown up to "save" Thomas, who was for a brief time cut off from logistical support. Grant really did not like Thomas. Thomas had a staff as large as the law would allow (the size of a commander's staff was subject to congressional approval), and he was almost a martinet. I say almost because his men came to revere him--if he insisted that you wear the standard uniform blouse, trousers and boots, Thomas also moved heaven and earth to assure that you have the standard blouse, trousers and boots, and in good condition. When the army in Chattanooga was reduced to eating horse, mule and catfish from the river, Thomas and his staff ate horse, mule and catfish from the river.

But Thomas was very correct, and he and his staff could not hide (and probably didn't try to hide) their disdain for Grant's staff of good ole boys and drinking buddies. By that most natural of human mechanisms which people apply to those whom they dislike, Grant seemed to blame Thomas for Rosecrans incredible stupidity in the Chickamauga campaign. But worse than that, Thomas did the unforgivable, and succeeded where Grant expected him to fail.

In the battle of Chicamauga, it all came apart for Rosecrans when he unwisely interferred with his corps commander and ordered Brigadier Wood to withdraw his division from the line, and to move with General Van Cleve (who was in reserve directly behind Wood) to close a gap to the north. The problem with this was that there was no gap to the north, and this took place just as Longstreet (sent west by Lee after the Gettysburg debacle) launched an attack into the gap created by Wood's departure.

So, after Grant's arrivel, he ordered Thomas to conduct a reconnaissance in force against Bragg's outposts (Bragg then commanded the Army of Tennessee) on Orchard Knob, which overlooked Chattanooga. In typical Thomas fashion, he selected the division of General Wood (the "goats" of the battle of Chickamauga) to conduct the maneuver, thereby showing his confidence in men who had been shamed (unjustly), and who were eager to redeem themselves. Phil Sheridan's division lined upon on one flank, and Howard's corps on the other.

Also typical of Thomas, Wood's men were tricked out in full uniform (unlike the slackers of Sherman's Army of the Tennessee), and they stepped off to the sounds of the divisional band, with the regimental bands joining in, and all their colors flying. Almost ignoring the fire of the Confederate brigade defending Orchard Knob, the advanced at the double-quick, in parade ground order, their lines never wavering, and with the bayonet advanced. (Thomas was on of the few Federal commanders who routinely ordered his men to "give them the bayonet" and who actually meant it--in general Americans didn't like to use and avoided using the bayonet in that war.) With a nudge and a wink, Sheridan and Howard advanced "to conform," and those poor, scrawny bastards on Orchard Knob were looking at 15,000 Yankees barrelling down on them in parade ground order--they all recalled pressing business elsewhere, and Wood's men occupied Orchard Knob (not in his orders), which Grant and Thomas then made their headquarters.

But more unforgivable competence was to be displayed by Thomas and his spit-and-polish army. To attack Bragg, the armies in Chattanooga would have to march south, then wheel to the right and assualt Missionary Ridge, Bragg's main line. But to the southwest of Chattanooga was a steep, rocky and wooded ridge known as Lookout Mountain. To assault Lookout Mountain, Joe Hooker and a corps from the east had been brought in. Thomas, although not order to do so, nor prohibited from doing so, had concentrated his artillery in defilade (not visible to the enemy by direct line of sight) behind the low ridges and hills to the west of Orchard Knob. When Hooker's boys had clawed their way up the western slope of Lookout Mountain, Bragg sent two brigades to reinforce the defenders. Thomas had sent out artillery officers as forward observers, and had strung telegraph wire and sent telegraphers with them. Using indirect fire (the Federal batteries could not see their enemies, either), Thomas' artillery blew the reinforcements to Hell before they could get up the ridge--Hooker was soon the master of Lookout Mountain.

The second part of Grant's plan was for Sherman's boys (popularly known as "Grant's gorillas") to cross the Tennessee River and assault the northern anchor of Bragg's line at the railroad tunnel on the line leading to Knoxville, Tennessee. Thomas had offered Sherman two of his own divisions, which Sherman had contemptuously turned down. Sherman soon got into trouble and his assault faltered. Thomas immediately transferred his artillery to the north of Orchard Knob, and sending out his signal officers with semaphor flag teams, he again used indirect fire to destroy the Confederate attempt to counterattack Sherman. But there was a worse offense to come.

Throughout these operations, Thomas' Army of the Cumberland, by now decently supplied, had been standing by watching. They were just itching to get at Bragg's army, and as Sherman's attack faltered and broke down. the Army of the Cumberland advanced on Bragg's main line on Missionary Ridge. Grant had ordered an advance to the rifle pits at the base of the ridge, but the Yankee infantry just kept going (some officers commented that it would be stupid to halt the assualt just when it got going). Grant, in a fury, turned on Thomas and demanded who had ordered the advance. Thomas frostily replied: "I do not know. I did not."

Thomas' boys moved out in parade ground order (as always) and overran Bragg's line--all three lines of field intrenchments, breaking Bragg's whole line in the center, and forcing Bragg to retreat in order to save Cleburne's troops at Tunnel Hill on his right flank. Hooker had finally gotten underway to attack Bragg's left. (Thomas had been initially unwilling to order an advance on Missionary Ridge until he knew that Hooker was in place to neutralize Bragg's left.) Driving all before them and cheering, Thomas' infantry almost ran all the way to the top of the ridge. The first officer there (at least allegedly) was Arthur MacArthur (father of Douglas MacArthur), who was said to have planted his regiments colors at the summit, shouting "on Wisconsin." He was just 18 years of age. For this feat, he was cited for the Medal of Honor, which, however, he was not awarded until 1891.

Now Bragg was on the run, and was soon replaced by Joe Johnston. Grant wanted to follow closely, and so he stripped Thomas of all his horses and mules, and in typical fashion, complained to Lincoln that Thomas "has the slows" again, when the Army of the Cumberland was unable to keep up. Throughout the advance on Atlanta, Johnston displayed his high level of competence by conducting a fighting retreat over a wide front and over a period of weeks. His men complained that they would be kept in line while the "public property" was retreived, even to the point of the harness being stripped from dead horses. Every time Sherman had set up an attack on Johnston's latest defensive line, Thomas would maneuver on Johnston's flanks, forcing him to retreat before Sherman could execute his attack. Sherman became so irritated that he complained to Grant (now in Washington), and Thomas was stripped of all of his army except for Schofield's corps.

After the debacle at Atlanta, Hood retreated to the south and then the west, hoping to lure Sherman into an unwise battle. But Sherman grew exasperated, and decide to leave the second largest army in Confederate service to do as they pleased, and marched off to the sea. While Sherman was "making Georgia howl," Hood turned north and advanced to the Tennessee river. Thomas, as was his wont, was busily assembling troops and horse and mules as fast as he could, but initially, the only force to oppose Hood was Schofield's newly reconstitued Army of Ohio, numbering about 25,000 men. Hood was able to cross the Tennesse after masking Schofield, and force his retreat to the Duck River. There, Hood pulled off the same maneuver, masking Schofield and crossing upriver, forcing Schofield to retreat. Thomas had already ordered Schofield to fall back, because Thomas was expecting A. J. Smith, commanding a corps of Sherman's Army of the Tennessee, who had been chasing Sterling Price around the Trans-Mississippi. So, Schofield was at least prepared to move.

At Franklin, Tennessee, on the Harpeth River, Schofield did not care to be winkled out of his position in the same manner a third time, so he left a small force (roughly division size) on the south bank in a heavily fortified tête du pont, while Schofield spread the rest of his forces out on either flank to oppose any attempt by Hood to cross the river as he had twice done before. Although Forrest demonstrated both upstream and downstream, and fixed Schofield's little army in place, and although Hood heavily outnumbered him, and could have forced a crossing at just about any point, he seems to have lost his head. Apparently deciding that he was both physically and morally superior to his enemy, he launched a series of frontal assaults on Schofield's position at Frankling--the tête du pont. Although the first attack broke through--at heavy cost--the Federals soon drove the Confederates back, and the battle raged all day. Hood lost about three times as many men as Schofield, and Schofield was able to withdraw his little army in good order, and fall back to Nashville, where Thomas was assembling whatever forceds he could scrape up, and just about every horse and mule in Tennessee which wasn't well hidden.

Hood now set up lines south of Nashville, but his army was reduced to 40,000 or fewer men. Thomas had assembled more than 50,000 men and thousands of horses and mules. Thomas planned to attack Hood, and sent a message to that effect to Washington. Grant and Lincoln became angry when no word of an attack came (central Tennessee had been paralyzed by a typical mid-South winter storm of rain which turned the fields into sheets of ice), and Grant wrote out a telegram to Thomas to turn his command over to Schofield. The chief telegrapher in Washington wisely put the message in his pocket and did not send it. Grant had ordered John A. Logan to proceed to Nashville and take command of Thomas' army, but he had only reached Louisville when Thomas attacked on December 16, 1864.

Thomas' attack ripped through Hood's lines just as the Army of the Cumberland had done at Missionary Ridge. Now the wisdom of assembling all the horses and mules was revealed, and the delay upon which Thomas had insisted while he trained his troops. Mounting the infantry reserve which had not been needed in the battle, and combining them with Wilson's cavalry (Wilson was the only Federal commander who consistently defeated Nathan Beford Forrest in the field), the Yankees ran down the routed survivors of the Army of Tennessee and scattered them, destroying that army as Sherman had failed to do in Georgia after the battles around Atlanta.

Meade's job was to destroy Lee's army, which he eventually did. Sherman's job was to destroy Hood's army, but he decided he would rather make Georgia howl, and march to the sea. Thomas, under great difficulties, eventually accomplished the destruction of Hood's army. Survivors of the Army of Tennesse would filter over the moutains and join Joe Johnston (back in the saddle once again), and combined with the scrapings of troops from North and South Carolina, Johnston would confront Sherman at Bentonville, North Carolina in 1865.

My opinion, which i would be at pains to point out is not the standard opinion of scholars of this war, is that Sherman's grandstanding in Georgia and South Carolina not only did not shorten the war, but in fact prolonged it. His job was to destroy Hood's army, and when it looked like being difficult to catch the boy, he just gave it up. But when Sherman was considered to be crazy, and Grant was considered a drunken failure, the two men had become fast friends, and supported one another. Sherman could do no wrong in Grant's eyes, and he never commented on Sherman turning back from Hood's army in order to march to the sea.

What? How could you possibly think you could take such a measurement?
That's what I'm trying to explain to you. There are aspects and nuances of the truth that are not measureable or understandable unless or until one is able to experience and observe the repercussions and consequences of said attitudes.

Let me ask you this- do you think all the people who fought for the Union hated black people and disregarded their humanity?
Or do you think that maybe there were numerous and various reasons this war was fought by individuals?
Could one person's motivation have been economical and another person's humanitarian?

I don't know - I guess I just don't view it as having to be one 'reason' as strictly opposed to another.

And I do believe that there were people who fought for the Union who were anti-slavery. This means to me that, just possibly, they cared about the humanity of these people, the union of the nation and the liberty, equality and freedom for all people that the nation was supposed to have been founded on.

It was typical of anyone who grew up and went to school in the north where segregation was not the rule or law of the land for many years before it was outlawed down south.


I didn't live in a racially mixed poor neighborhood. That's my point. This black man was an attorney. Another of our black neighbors was the head of the counseling department for Princeton University. My father (a white man) was a business executive.
They all lived within spitting distance of one another. Do you think that was happening in the late sixties down south? No, I can almost guarantee you it wasn't.

Twenty years later when I had my own suburban living experience down south - it STILL wasn't happening.

I don't know how else to explain what I'm trying to say. It's like the difference between reading a book about skiing and actually skiing.
You can read all the books you want, but you will not understand the nuances or actual, real and factual experiences of all parties in each place until you live there- just as you won't know what it feels like to ski until you actually ski.

And no - not very many people involved in the war had lily-pure (I don't want to say white) motives for going to war - most likely.
But more people in the north were anti-slavery than people in the south and I do believe that some of this - no certainly not all - but some of it was humanitarian.
If you don't want to call that love - don't. But there is and was more humanitarian spirit toward black people evidenced by what the north DID than what the south DID in the civil war and I think it was because there was a different mindset.





Maybe I'm just not as cynical as you are

You must agree that the plans for the campaign was agreed between he and Grant. EVen grant had to remove Butler for failure in attaining goals of his side of the campaign. AS I hadda reread Boatner, the entire campaign was timed to be completed in MArch 1865 with a mass "pincer" on Lee at somehwere Southa dn west of PEtersburg. Well, with Thomas being redirected to take on Hood and Grover ******* around till he reached Savannah, and the bad weather in SC, Sherman only seemed to lose a month on the entire campaign.
Now , if your saying that the entire campaigns elongated the war, Im listening , because it would involve an agreement between Grant Sherman AND Lincoln (who , on the one side, was never a fan of the Atlanta to Goldsboro March ). It was Grant who talked the president into it based on the fact that WInfield Scott diod basically the same thing in the MExican War

Well, the agreement came only after Sherman had abandoned the effort to destroy Hood's army. It was after that that Grant brought it before Lincoln. Initially, Sherman had followed Hood south, and it was only after Sherman had reached Milledgeville (which was then the capital of Georgia, i believe) to find that Hood had moved off to the west, that he decided on his new, "brilliant" plan to make Georgia howl.

Historians commonly say that the point was this elaborate, pincer on a nearly continental level, but it ignores something significant. Lee was being supplied from several places, but after the campagin in the Valley of Virginia, he relied on the Danville railroad and the Weldon railroad from North Carolina. Meade was moving progressively south and west around Petersburg to cut off the Weldon railroad, and when that was accomplished, it opened up a route which, in combination with Federal cavalry from the Valley, would assure that Danville was cut off. Sherman was nowhere near cutting off Lee's supplies when Meade cut the Weldon railroad.

To me, this claim about a grand strategy stinks of justification after the fact. Once again, i'm presenting my opinion.

I just checked with Wikipedia to be sure of the dates before i posted this, and it appears that Meade's army (even though Grant was not satisfied with their performance) cut the Weldon Railroad in August, 1864, in two operations which obliged the Confederates to cart their supplies many miles around the Federal lodgement. Southern historians treat it as no big deal, but it just made the task of supplying Richmond and Petersburg that much more difficult, and it obliged Lee to spread his already thin forces even further to deal with the Federal lodgement south of Petersburg.

This page at Civil War-dot-org tells about Meade's operations to cut the Weldon railroad.

That left the Danville and Richmond railroad as the only source of supply for Lee's army. Incredibly, the State of North Carolina refused to link up Greensboro to the Danville railroad, citing a probable post-war advantage to shipping in Virginia. Throughout the war, the Confederate commissary and quartermaster organizations would have supplies which they were unable to deliver to the amies. Lee finally abandoned Richmond and marched west on the Danville railroad--and as they neared the Appomatox River, he found ordnance supplies, but no rations. It was at that point that he gave up the effort to join Joe Johnston in North Carolina, and sent to Grant for terms. I don't see how Sherman can be said to have played any part in this. Johnston did not surrender for three more weeks.

Good insight. WIth the Weldon RR action it makes perfect sense. I will have to put a note in my own compilation I will append what you wrote in there.

That could be entirely. many of the old books I have (like Cox's "Campaign volumes--which I scored 5$ at a yard sale about 15 years ago). Jacob D Cox was a Union Brigadier who served in the campaign so I imagine he could be accused of gilding the story for the benefit of his peers and superiors.
He wrote his CAmpaign Histories in late 1890's and he died just a few years later so he didnt hang around to be accuswed of revisionism.