The Collapse of the Confederacy

Introduction

Mark Grimsley and Brooks D. Simpson Introduction Americans have known defeat—at Bataan, the Chosin Reservoir, and in the bitter ordeal of Vietnam—but Southerners are the only Americans ever to have confronted outright military disaster. For that reason the death of the Confederate States of America in 1865 has long fascinated Americans of every region, strongly focused on the stark question, Why did the Confederacy perish? Most responses have taken a “macro” view of the answer. That is, they have identified some fatal defect that ensured that the South would lose the struggle for national existence. The present work takes a different approach. It focuses instead on the final months of the Confederacy’s life and examines the perceptions and decisions of the people who lived through that period. In that sense, it offers a “micro” view of the Confederacy’s demise. Some years ago the political scientist Fred Iklé lamented the failure of historians to examine the termination of wars with anywhere near the zeal devoted to their causes and conduct.1 Although Iklé framed his complaint mainly in terms of civilian decision making, it applies equally to the short shrift often accorded military decisions taken by the losing side after defeat seems inevitable. In this respect, Civil War historians are as guilty as any. Practically all of them agree that after the fall of Atlanta in September 1864 and Abraham Lincoln’s triumphant reelection in November, the South had no remaining chance to make good its independence. Well aware that Appomattox and Durham Station loom close at hand, their treatments of the war’s final months smack strongly of denouement: the great, tragic conflict flows to its now certain end. Certain, that is, to us, but deeply uncertain to the millions of Americans, North and South, who lived through the anxious days of early 1865. That their 1 2 Mark Grimsley and Brooks D. Simpson bid for independence was doomed was not obvious to all Southerners in early 1865. Many regarded the hour as one of grave peril for the Confederacy but no worse than the sickening reversals of spring 1862 or—harkening back to the American Revolution—the dismal winter at Valley Forge. Some even recalled the intense war weariness (now almost forgotten) that preceded the unexpected triumph at Yorktown in 1781. Even those who realized the Confederacy could not win the war believed, with some reason, that it was possible to obtain good terms for a negotiated return to the Union. Yet how to accomplish this delicate feat, and how to conserve the South’s military position in the meantime?2 Northerners, though hopeful and increasingly confident of victory, were not certain when it would come. Many expected the fighting to drag on into late spring or summer. Others fretted lest some sudden disaster restore the military stalemate. And several high-ranking officials worried that the defeat of the Confederacy’s field armies might spur Southerners to turn to largescale guerrilla warfare of the sort that had plagued Union-occupied areas for years. Northern victory might be inevitable, but considerable doubt remained about the conditions that would obtain when it did. The final months of the Confederacy thus offer fascinating opportunities— as a case study in war termination, as a period that shaped the initial circumstances of Reconstruction, and as a lens through which to analyze Southern society at its moment of supreme stress. Such a study can also extend the important ongoing dialogue concerning the general or macro explanations for Southern defeat. These macro explanations often take the form of epitaphs, a conceit that goes back as far as the Civil War itself. Well before the South met defeat, the Georgia soldier-politician Robert Toombs caustically predicted that the Confederacy’s tombstone would read, “Died of West Point”—a swipe at the professionalofficershethoughtwereruiningtheSoutherncause.Eightyyears later, Bell Irvin Wiley avenged the officers by suggesting that the Confederacy “Died of Big-Man-me-ism”—a swipe at men like Robert Toombs. Noting that governors such as Joseph E. Brown of Georgia often thwarted the central government’s efforts to mobilize manpower and resources, Frank Lawrence Owsley offered “Died of States’ Rights” as the Confederacy’s epitaph. In a similar vein, David Herbert Donald advocated “Died of Democracy.”3 Each epitaph claimed that the rebellion perished from internal causes and implied that the South could have won the war but for fatal errors by its political and military leadership. A contrasting...