American Civil War: 1862

The Civil War 1861 - 1865
Begun	April 12, 1861
Ended	April 9, 1865
Casualties	970,000
Total dead	620,000
United States of America
President	Abraham Lincoln
Secretary of War	Simon Cameron, Edwin M. Stanton
Secretary of the Navy	Gideon Welles
Secretary of State	William Seward
Confederate States of America
President	Jefferson Davis
Secretary of War	Leroy Pope Walker, Judah P. Benjamin, George W. Randolph, James Seddon, John C. Breckinridge
Secretary of the Navy	Stephan Mallory
Secretary of State	Robert Toombs, Robert M.T. Hunter, Judah P. Benjamin

The first year of the Civil War began with green troops on both sides expecting easy victories and a quick end of the war; many young men enlisted with romantic dreams of glory. 1862 had barely begun when those dreams would be forever shattered by the carnage of a fierce battle at a site in Tennessee whose name meant "peace", and would barely end after the single bloodiest day in American history.

The recalcitrant general

Major General George B. McClellan, United States Army.

By the time winter fell in 1861, Major General George B. McClellan had taken a demoralized force around Washington and transformed it into the superbly trained and equipped Army of the Potomac, numbering some 100,000 men. But by the first week of January 1862, it was becoming clearer that for all of McClellan's acts of creating a superior army, there was little, if any, immediate intent to use the army for what it was created to do. At a cabinet meeting with several of McClellan's division commanders present (McClellan was ill with possible typhus for much of January), Lincoln hinted that "if General McClellan does not want to use the Army, I would like to borrow it, provided I could see how it could be made to do something." In the west, Generals Don Carlos Buell in Kentucky, and Henry Halleck in Missouri also didn't make too many moves; although it was winter, Lincoln still expected them to make some sort of advance against the enemy. "Delay is ruining us," he said to them by wire, "and it is indispensable for me to have something definite." (TL 5, pp. 62-68)

While McClellan was laid up ill, Secretary of War Simon Cameron was on his way out: he had presided over a department involved in corruption and favoritism at the top, and soldiers getting bad uniforms, bad guns, and bad meat at the bottom. Add to that the fact McClellan was, for all intents and purposes, unwilling to bring the fight to the enemy. In Cameron's place was a bombastic bundle of energy, Edwin McMasters Stanton, who would have Brigadier General Charles Stone arrested on his first day at work for the debacle at Ball's Bluff, and before January was out he made it clear that the corruption was over with, and McClellan would use the chain of command like any common soldier; the back door henceforth was closed. "The champagne and oysters on the Potomac must be stopped," he roared. "I will force this man McClellan to fight." (TL 5, pp. 70-71)

The arrest of Stone only made McClellan more cautious, instead of Stanton's hope that it would spur the general into action.

Strange-looking warships

On May 8, 1861, Confederate Navy Secretary Stephan Mallory submitted his plans for building ironclads to the Committee on Naval Affairs, stating it would be costly, but the advantages of the Union Navy being overwhelmed by the sheer power implied in ironclads would be worth the price. By the end of the month the plans were approved, and the first ship selected for refitting was the salvaged hulk of USS Merrimac, scuttled the previous month when the Union abandoned Norfolk. She was placed in drydock, and over the next several months the hull was razed to the gun deck, the engine overhauled, and heavy-timber casemate was built over the hull and and a dozens guns, then roofed over with sheet iron four inches thick. As a final weapon, a cast iron ram weighing 1,500 pounds was fitted to the bow (TL 3, pp. 48-49). The Confederacy would christen her CSS Virginia.

At about the same time the Merrimac was being overhauled, a naval committee was convened in Washington in August 1861, with Union Navy Secretary Gideon Welles presiding, and the discussion was also about ironclads. Of seventeen submitted plans, two were accepted, but without much enthusiasm for either: a large, sea-going broadside frigate named New Ironsides, and a smaller gunboat named Galena, designed by Cornelius Bushnell of New Haven, Connecticut (TL 3, pg. 51).

That same night Bushnell had taken his plans for Galena to a friend named John Ericsson, a Swedish inventor and engineer, who told him the plans were sound. Ericsson then went to a cupboard and pulled a model of his own and showed it to Bushnell, a strange-looking flat vessel with a single, two-gun turret. Convinced of this vessel's superiority, Bushnell took Ericsson before the board, who bickered back and forth until President Lincoln looked it over. "All I have to say'" he said' "is what the girl said when she put her foot in the stocking: 'It strikes me there's something in it!'" After a detailed explanation of his ship's qualities (and after some deception on Bushnell's part after the plans were initially rejected), Ericsson's plans were approved; in just over one hundred days, Ericsson's Monitor would be launched (TL 3, pp. 51-52).

Eastern Theater

Hampton Roads

the Monitor and the Merrimac at Hampton Roads, March 9, 1862.

The Battle of Hampton Roads began on March 8, when the former USS Merrimac steamed out of Norfolk as the ironclad CSS Virginia and made her heading straight for the Union warships on blockade duty. Virginia's first victim was the 24-gun sloop USS Cumberland, at anchor off Newport News, which she easily dispatched by ramming an immense hole in her side, while Cumberland's own guns fired shots that glanced off her iron skin. As water awashed over Cumberland's gun deck, Virginia turned about and headed for the nearby USS Congress, which was compelled to surrender within minutes after an escape attempt ended with Congress heeled over on a sandbar, her 50 guns useless. While Virginia's commander, Captain Franklin Buchanan, sent boats out to receive the ship's surrender, soldiers on shore opened fire, wounding Buchanan in the thigh; he would subsequently order red-hot shell fired into the Congress, setting her ablaze. After abandoning an attempt at sinking USS Minnesota, which had also run aground, Virginia retired for the night in Norfolk, intending to finish the work in the morning.

When morning arrived, Virginia steamed into the channel for the Minnesota, when lookouts on the ironclad peered through their glasses and saw the strange sight of a bizarre-looking ship steaming out from behind the big frigate. The Union ironclad USS Monitor had arrived during the night, and during the next four hours both ironclads battered each other to a stalemate, neither side gaining an advantage over the other, and both would retire from the contest, never to fight each other again. Virginia would be destroyed in May to prevent her from falling into Union hands when Norfolk was taken back, and Monitor would sink in a gale off Cape Hatteras in December. But the battle itself would have far-reaching effects world-wide, for it demonstrated that the day of the wooden warship was over.

The Peninsular Campaign

Following the neutralization of the threat the ‘’Virginia’’ had caused, McClellan disembarked supplies and 100,000 troops at Fort Monroe on April 4 and began his march up the peninsula, with the aim of capturing the Confederate capitol of Richmond. Facing him are about 17,000 men under General Joseph E. Johnston, who continues to shift his forces for delaying tactics in Richmond’s defense. McClellan continues to move north, having an engagement at the Warwick River before occupying Yorktown and Falmouth by April 18, and helped in repulsing Confederates by a river flotilla which included USS Monitor (Bowman, pg. 93).

But he is slow in going. Part of the delay at Yorktown was McClellan’s wanting of a count of the enemy in the field; after hearing of an “endless march” of Confederates, he decided they must outnumber his own. “The Warwick River grows worse the more you look at it,” he wired Lincoln. “It seams clear that I shall have the whole force of the enemy on my hands, probably not less than 100,000 men, and possibly more.” He didn’t know that the “endless march” was staged by Confederate Major General John B. Magruder, who had just a few hundred men march in a circle, with a small view for the Federals convinced the men numbered in the thousands. McClellan’s delays only made Lincoln more impatient. “It is indispensable that you strike a blow,” he wired back to his general (TL 5, pp. 99-102). In the end, it was Johnston who withdrew from Yorktown, knowing he couldn’t compete with McClellan’s superior force, but also knowing McClellan’s way of fighting. “No one but McClellan could have hesitated to attack” he would say later (TL 5, pg. 107). McClellan would also be stymied by Confederate defenses at Centerville; on finally getting the nerve to figure out why such well-armed fortifications appeared not to have troops, he discovered that they were armed with “Quaker guns” – painted logs (TL 5, pg. 85).

By the first week of May there are serious clashes between Confederates and Federals. Some 1,500 men are lost in battles between Yorktown and Williamsburg; by the 15th, Johnston’s troops have moved back across the Chickahominy River as the Union forces move closer to Richmond, with more fighting breaking out at Drewry’s Bluff on the banks of the James; a naval force with the ironclads Monitor and Galena lends support, but is forced back from effective Confederate fire at Fort Darling (Bowman, pg. 98).

References

• Time-Life Books The Civil War, vol. 3 (The Blockade), Time Inc, New York (1983)
• Time-Life Books The Civil War, vol. 4 (The Road to Shiloh), Time Inc, New York (1983)
• Time-Life Books The Civil War, vol. 5 (Forward to Richmond), Time Inc, New York (1983)
• Bowman, John S. (editor), The Civil War Almanac World Almanac Publications, New York (1985)

Links

The Official Records of the War of the Rebellion

• Official Records, from Cornell University
• Official Records, from eHistory.com

General

• Library of Congress Civil War map collection
• The Civil War Homepage
• The PBS/Ken Burns documentary
• The History Place
• Civil War at a Glance; US Interior Department
• Shotgun's home of the American Civil War
• US Civil War Center, from Louisiana State University
• Civil War Treasures, from New York Historical Society