Union Combined Operations in the Civil War

2. A Thorn, Not a Dagger: Strategic Implications of Ambrose Burnside’s North Carolina Campaign

2 A Thorn, Not a Dagger: Strategic Implications of Ambrose Burnside’s North Carolina Campaign David C. Skaggs H istorians have largely overlooked the strategic significance of Burnside ’s campaign in the North Carolina Sounds. James M. McPherson does not discuss the New Bern expedition in his excellent and prizewinning Battle Cry of Freedom, nor does Vincent Esposito include a map of the campaign in his West Point Atlas of American Wars. One author who does discuss the campaign is Rowena Reed in her book Combined Operations in the Civil War. In Reed’s view, Burnside’s thrust into the North Carolina Sounds was part of Little Mac’s ‘‘logistical strategy’’ to cut the supply lines to the Confederate armies in Virginia and ‘‘paralyze the South’s internal lines of communication .’’ Reed praises George B. McClellan for his strategic vision, and especially for his plan to use the army and the navy in a combined operation designed to establish Union control of critical transportation nodes. Reed argues that, if fully developed, Burnside’s operation would have inserted a strategic dagger into the heart of the Confederacy. In the end, however, the thrust fell far short of having the kind of impact McClellan envisioned, and it proved to be no more than a thorn in the Confederacy’s side.1 McClellan’s emphasis on the centrality of logistical support was a product of three influences: his experience in the Mexican-American War, his study of the Crimean War, and his experience as a railroad engineer in the 1850s. He was convinced that the key to cutting off supplies to Confederate forces in Virginia was to establish Union control of the railroad junctions at Knoxville, Tennessee, and Goldsboro, North Carolina. Once these critical transportation hubs were in Union hands, McClellan believed that the Confederacy would be forced to evacuate Virginia. It might even lead to a rebel capitulation and a peace settlement . At the very least, Union control and fortification of these critical junctures would compel the rebels to mount a campaign to retake them, and if they made such an attempt, Federal forces would have the advantage of fighting on the defensive using modern rifled weaponry against attacking infantry. This plan fit McClellan’s desire to win the war while avoiding excessive bloodshed or social revolution by forcing Confederate leaders to accept national reunion without interfering with the South’s ‘‘peculiar institution.’’ 24 Burnside’s North Carolina Campaign But it ran counter to the expectations of some Republican congressional leaders who saw the secessionist crisis as an opportunity to strike at the institution of slavery, and of much of the public who found voice in Horace Greeley’s exhortation that Union forces should immediately proceed ‘‘on to Richmond.’’ Of course, McClellan himself was not exempt from the Richmond disease. He envisioned these logistical thrusts in both Tennessee and North Carolina as secondary contributions to his grand campaign on the Virginia Peninsula and the capture of the rebel capital. Historians (with the notable exception of Reed) have been generally critical of McClellan’s plan, often attributing his preference for an indirect approach to an unwillingness to come to grips with the enemy. By far the least discussed aspect of McClellan’s logistical strategy, however, was his quest to close the inlets through North Carolina’s Outer Banks and then seize the critical railroad junction at Goldsboro, which would cut off the supplies coming from the deepwater ports of Wilmington and the newly established port of Morehead City. The Atlantic and North Carolina Railroad from Morehead City ran through New Bern before heading for its junction with the Wilmington and Weldon Railroad at Goldsboro. As Reed notes, the capture of Goldsboro would have constituted an important threat to the rebel armies in Virginia.2 What Reed overlooks in her assessment of this scenario is the reality of military operations. As the late Archer Jones wrote in Civil War Command and Strategy, McClellan’s concept required a ‘‘persisting strategy’’ of seizing and holding critical terrain. Such a policy demanded large forces and a long-term commitment to hold the positions taken. A thrust toward Goldsboro might have interfered with Confederate logistics, but Union troops could not have stayed there without a logistical tail of their own, and Goldsboro was too far inland to be sustained by waterborne shipping. The reverse of a ‘‘persisting strategy’’ is a ‘‘raiding strategy,’’ in which a force destroys critical logistical nodes and then moves on...