Episode 15: Elemental Loyalties

A New History of the American South

Dr Edward Ayers (2018)

Film Review

In this lecture, Ayers describes the escalating sequence of events between Lincoln’s inauguration on March 4, 1861 and the attack by the Confederate States of America on Fort Sumter, the US bases in Charleston Harbor South Carolina.

During his inaugural speech, Lincoln promised not to support laws affecting slavery or to appoint abolitionists to federal positions. According to Ayers, he was attempting to buy time for Washington “compromisers” to find solutions for the North/South political impasse.

The next day, Fort Sumter commander Major Robert Anderson notified Lincoln he was running out of food. Lincoln, in turn, notified the governor of South Carolina of his plans to use a US naval ship to deliver food (but no military supplies) to the fort. He also indicated the US Navy wouldn’t fire on Confederate forces unless attacked.

Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederate States of America, viewed provisioning US troops as an act of war. On April 12, 1861 at 4.30 am, he ordered Confederate militia* to to attack Fort Sumter, forcing the US troops there to abandon it.

After Lincoln called for US troops to defend Fort Sumter, Virginia seceded. Despite being a pro-Union state, fighting their sister slave states was out of the question.

According to Ayers, the North’s advantages in the Civil War were their greater industrial capacity, their more extensive railroads and ships (to distribute food, draft animals, and troops), and the eligibility of their entire male population for the draft (the majority of southerners were still slaves).

The South’s main advantages were their more experienced generals and the defensive nature of the war. As with the Revolutionary War, the South wouldn’t have to win every battle to wear out northern forces and prevail.

The North thought they could defeat the South quickly by adopting General Winfield Scott’s Anaconda Plan. This called for Union forces to use the Mississippi River to divide southern forces and the US Navy to seal off southern ports from receiving foreign supplies.** The main weakness of this plan was the South’s long border with Mexico, which proved impossible to blockade.

During the first half of 1861, 700,000 southern men voluntarily enlisted for three years to fight for the Confederacy. Owing to high numbers of casualties and desertions (when troops went home to plant and harvest crops), the South initiated compulsory conscription in 1862. The North did so in 1863.

Women on both sides formed 200,000 voluntary societies to supply troops with food, clothes and other necessities. Although nursing injured troops was previously a male role, this responsibility shifted to women during the Civil War. Both Dorothea Dix and Clara Barton (founder of the American branch of the Red Cross) came to prominence for their role in organizing nursing volunteers. Northern women (the South exempted slave overseers to ensure adequate food production***) also replaced fighting men in tilling fields and in factories.

*In April 1861, Confederate troops were recruited for a 90-day tour of duty. Neither side expected the Civil War to last four years.

**Especially given support the Confederacy was receiving from Britain and other European countries. See The British Role in Triggering the Civil War

***Unfortunately as  inflation rose to 12% per month towards the end of 1861, southern farmers who previously grew food shifted to cotton production. Cotton could be stored and sold for a higher price once the war ended.

The film can be viewed free with a library card on Kanopy

https://pukeariki.kanopy.com/video/elemental-loyalties-and-descent-war

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