The Civil War in the West: Victory and Defeat from the Appalachians to the Mississippi

Conclusion

307 {Conclusion T he Union won and the Confederacy lost the Civil War largely due to what each side did, or failed to do, in the West. This expansive region, embraced by the Mississippi River, the Ohio River, the Gulf Coast, and the Appalachian Highlands, comprised the arena where critical policies and decisive actions shifted the fortunes of victory and defeat to one side or the other. Despite the fact that most public attention seemed to be focused on the East, where large armies grappled in bloody battles within a constricted corridor between Washington , D.C., and Richmond, Virginia, the destiny of the nation was initially worked out in the Mississippi Valley, then extended to the central theater of operations along the rail line bisecting the southeastern Confederacy. Victory and defeat played itself out in Western climes and on Western topography before a massive column of veteran troops under William T. Sherman bore down on Robert E. Lee’s embattled army in the trenches at Petersburg to help bring the war to a close in 1865.1 It is ironic that decisive victory should take place in a region containing so many features appearing to give the Confederacy many advantages over its opponent. While the Virginia theater of operations , with its short distances and massive accumulation of Federal resources, seemed to favor the invader, the West was so large and geographically diverse that one might suppose no invader could subdue it even if the Confederates had few resources with which to defend the area. But the Western Federals did a magnificent job of overcoming all obstacles in their area of responsibility. They defeated the Confederates in nearly every major battle in the West, in contrast to those that occurred in the East, and chewed up Rebel territory with every advance. Distance—​ the chief geographic aspect of the Western war—​ did not prevent the Unionists from conquering a territory larger than France, Switzerland, and the Low Countries combined in less than four years of fighting. The Federal victory in the West was due not only to greater resources of manpower, equipment, and supplies, although that su- 308 Conclusion periority was a necessary component of Northern success. It was also due to the Federals’ greater ability to mobilize and manipulate those resources to overcome all difficulties of time and space. It should not be assumed that the Confederate forces offered little resistance; the battles in the West were fought at least as hard as those in the East, although typically not on such a lavish scale. After maneuvering large bodies of troops across long distances, overcoming mountains, swamps, innumerable streams, and often on short rations, the Federals met their opponents man for man on the battlefield and more often than not drove them back to reclaim more territory and reduce the already insufficient Rebel manpower in the West by a few thousand troops. One can forgive the excessive praise Westerners heaped upon themselves , beginning with the Vicksburg campaign and coming to a sometimes annoying crescendo by the end of the march through the Carolinas, for their achievements in the West were astounding compared to the Eastern armies and to previous American military experience. The Confederates contributed to their own defeat in the West; that defeat cannot be accounted for solely by insufficient resources. History is replete with examples of wars won by the weaker power. The Confederates made poor use of what resources were available to them because of poor management , poor decision making at high levels, and the bad luck of having generals who could not learn how to effectively command. It is ironic that there were pockets of abundant food resources in the West—​ for example, in central Georgia—​ which were more easily tapped and made use of by invading Union armies than by Confederate forces. High-­ level decisions kept generals like Braxton Bragg and John Pemberton in charge of key armies at pivotal periods of the war. Even though both men had admirable qualities as administrators and strategists, neither of them possessed either the fighting ability of Lee or that Eastern general’s knack of inspiring his subordinates with confidence. In contrast, the generals who came to dominate Federal operations in the West developed into some of the most impressive commanders in American history. Natural ability accounted for much of the success of Ulysses S. Grant and William T. Sherman, but the nurturing of both generals by President Lincoln and Henry Halleck, who gave them the latitude to develop...