The new capital helped solidify Virginia's adherence to the new nation; Virginia gave Davis 31 of his 131 generals, and a fifth of the gray-clad soldiers. On the other hand, Richmond's exposure necessitated tying down most of the Confederate army to defend the capital. Richmond was at the end of a long, thin supply line that made defense even more problematic. (In the last year of the war, for example, Lee's cavalry had to be stationed far away where forage was available.) True nationhood required recognition by the European powers, who might provide loans, arms sales, and perhaps even naval action against the Yankee blockade. Winning battles was the best way to make the Yankees weary, and prove to a skeptical world that the Confederate States of America was a legitimate, permanent nation that controlled its own territory and deserved full diplomatic recognition. The new Confederate army had its mission: hold Richmond and win some major battles.
==1861: Advantages and disadvantages==
The relative strength of the two sides was lopsided in favor of the North for a long war, but fairly even for a short one. The Confederacy had to win fast.
===Confederate psychology===
==1862==
Scenes of enthusiasm in 1861 gave way in 1862 to calculation. Northern factories hummed with orders for uniforms, wagons, rifles and harnesses, and longshoremen unloaded ships full of munitions from abroad. A thousand miles of new railroad track was laid, and hundreds of new factories and mills opened for business. The total output of farms increased even as two hundred thousand farmers donned blue uniforms. Quartermaster General [[Montgomery Meigs]] did a brilliant job in ensuring that the abundance of the rich Yankee economy was delivered on time and in quantity to the brigades that needed it. The South had few factories to begin with, and her ports were largely closed. Many plantations switched from cotton to foodstuffs, so the total food supply was still adequate. The new nation did have [[Josiah Gorgas]], a poor boy from Pennsylvanian who graduated West Point in 1841, married a southern belle, and became chief of the Ordnance Bureau in Richmond. He performed miracles in establishing a network of new factories, repair shops, sewing rooms, gunpowder mills and arsenals throughout the Confederacy. The Confederacy managed to produce 2,200 cannon (about one fourth the North's production). More than half were made by the 2,500 employees and slaves at Richmond's Tredegar Iron Works, operated something like a plantation by Joseph Anderson (West Point class of 1836). The grayclads in the front lines had rifles, but always were short of food, coffee, ammunition, boots, medicine, wagons and horses.
===Modernizing Americathe North===
The Republicans in Washington had a vision of an industrial nation, with great cities, efficient factories, productive farms, and high speed rail links. They wrote an elaborate program of economic modernization that had the dual purpose of winning the war and permanently transforming the economy. The tariff act of 1862 served not only to raise revenue, but also to encourage the establishment of factories free from British competition. Land grants went to railroad construction companies to open up the western plains and link up to California. Together with the free lands provided farmers by the Homestead Law the low-cost farm lands provided by the land grants speeded up the expansion of commercial agriculture. The North's most important war measure was perhaps the creation of a system of national banks that provided a sound currency for the industrial expansion. Even more important, the hundreds of new banks that were allowed to open were required to purchase government bonds. Thereby the nation monetized the potential wealth represented by farms, urban buildings, factories, and businesses, and immediately turned that money over to the Treasury for war needs. The Confederacy by contrast bankrupted its financial institutions by flooding the South with paper money that was not backed by real wealth or by a workable system of taxes. The basic philosophy of the Confederacy was that patriotic families should sacrifice their wealth for their new nation. Many did so, and became impoverished in the process. The philosophy in the North was it was profitable to be patriotic--to buy war bonds, to start a new bank, to bid on a war contract.
===Emancipate the slaves===
The decision to destroy slavery was a fateful one for Lincoln and the Republican Party in 1862. Still denying the reality of Confederate nationalism, they had concluded that the rich, arrogant slave owners were entirely at fault for the rebellion. They controlled the Richmond government, and officered the rebel army. To defeat the enemy it was essential to defeat its main source of strength--the system of slavery. The plight of the black slaves themselves was a concern for some of the Republicans, but not the primary motivation. The advantages in arming tens of thousands of black soldiers were unclear in 1862. There was no doubt however, that the decision to declare emancipation ripped apart the fabric of the North's political system, as the majority of Democrats repudiated the war effort, refused to enlist, and redoubled their efforts to defeat the Republicans. They scored important successes in the 1862 elections, which were largely a referendum on emancipation. The Republicans, however, continued to control the national government, the military, and most state governments. They also controlled most business and financial institutions everywhere in the North. The worst fear of the white south was a slave insurrection, and the Emancipation Proclamation appeared to be a clear warning that was coming. In actual practice, slaves ran away from their masters whenever Union armies approached (assuming their masters had not already transported them further south). There were no slave insurrections, no uprisings. But there was the even deeper fear of racial equality. Southern whites (and probably most northerners too) were strongly convinced that the black race was morally inferior to them. The Confederate position was that unending resistance was the only way to block emancipation and the systematic degradation of the white race.
==1863-1865==
By 1863, after two years of warfare, the North finally was mobilizing its economy full steam, while the South had crested and was falling back. Sherman, the most acute observer of the war, had predicted this development exactly even before Sumter, telling a rebel acquaintance:
:The North can make a steam-engine, locomotive or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or a pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical an determined people on earth--right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared. . . . At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, and shut out from the markets of Europe by blockade as you will be, your cause will begin to wane.<ref> Quoted in Lewis p 138, letter of Dec 1860</ref>
The blockade squeezed the southern economy into a downward spiral; it shrank by 40 to 50%. The hardships of Confederate civilians was greatly mitigated by the fact that eight in ten lived on farms with generally fertile soils. With little chance of selling tobacco or cotton, most land, family labor and slave labor was switched to food production. Shortages of coffee annoyed everyone, while a severe shortage of salt made the preservation of meat a major headache. Newspapers advised housewives how to economize. One explained in 1864: "Rather than complain about the lack of steak or about poor crop output, people in the South can turn to other food sources that are readily available." It suggested people start eating mushrooms, rats, frogs, and snails, items that were commonly consumed in other parts of the world and that would alleviate the danger of starvation.<ref> See [http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/Browser2/aubrowser/rvsept64.html#9.9a online]</ref>
The breakdown of the commissary and transportation systems kept the rebel army hungry. Richmond lacked the managerial skills needed to move food from where it was still abundant. Each rebel army learned to raid the countryside for food, fodder, wood, horses and mules, until they had stripped friendly territory bare. As early as the 1862 harvest season, Sergeant Robert Smith, of the Second Tennessee division, reported that his regiment had been given only one pound of flour each to last the next three days, and had gobbled it up. "They will have to live on parched [boiled] corn, wall-nuts & acorns for the next two days--rather hard living."<ref> Larry J. Daniel, ''Soldiering in the Army of Tennessee'' (1991) [http://books.google.com/books?id=Hv6wUEFhLIEC&pg=PA54&lpg=PA54&dq=%22acorns+for+the+next+two+days%22&source=bl&ots=rDUByN4QML&sig=k7gmy-HUB3tfj0vONHtQHbveRQE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=2&ct=result p. 54 online]</ref>The soldiers joked that the war was between the "Feds" and the "Cornfeds."
By spring 1863 poor quality rations, high in calories but low in vitamins and meat, had become the norm. The Army of the Tennessee fed its 50,000 troops every day with 35,000 pounds of bacon, 88,000 pounds of corn meal, 3,500 pounds of rice, 520 gallons of molasses, and a small river of ersatz "coffee" made from corn meal. The troops grumbled that warriors needed red meat to fight well, but they chewed their rancid bacon and soldiered on. Every few months standard rations were cut; more sugar, less beef. Vegetables became rarities, though one week some boxcars of tomatoes from Florida provided a special treat. Nutritional deficiencies kept the sick and wounded incapacitated for longer periods, caused scurvy and diarrhea, and may have produced the night blindness that handicapped the Confederates after dusk fell. Rations consisted mainly of corn meal and salt pork or lean beef, a diet that was dangerously lacking in Vitamins A and B. In the 20th century medical researchers discovered that a prolonged deficiency of Vitamin A can lead to "nyctalopia," that is, impaired vision, or night blindness. Diarrhea became very common among soldiers and civilians in the South. A lack of folate, a B vitamin, probably produced much of the diarrhea either directly or by increasing susceptibility to infection by one or more microorganisms. In winter, when battles were rare, the Confederate army sent thousands of soldiers home to allow them to work on their farm or in munitions factories; more would have been sent but the railroads could not handle them. The Confederate medical system, scarcely able to cope with battlefield casualties, routinely sent lightly injured men home temporarily. "The boys regard a severe wound now as equivalent to a furlough, and whenever one is wounded they say he has got a furlough for thirty, sixty or ninety days as the wound may be slight, severe, or serious."<ref> See [http://docsouth.dsi.internet2.edu/imls/topics.html original documents on Southern Homefront]; and [http://docsouth.dsi.internet2.edu/receipt/receipt.html 1863 Confederate cooking recipes in a time of shortages such as "Apple Pie without apples".] also [http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/vshadow2/Browser2/aubrowser/au.file.thrift.html "hardships of daily life from local Virginia newspaper]. For a scholarly study see, Alfred Jay Bollet, "Scurvy and Chronic Diarrhea in Civil War Troops: Were They Both Nutritional Deficiency Syndromes? ''Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences'' (1992) 47(1): 49-67. </ref>
The decaying infrastructure of the South negated the Confederacy's advantage of interior lines of communications. The US Navy commanded the high seas and every major river. To maintain mobility over the vast western distances, the quartermasters had to feed the workhorses, mules and cavalry mounts large amounts of forage (ten pounds a day each of corn and hay), which filled the available wagons and railroad cars. Lee's horses in Virginia were on half rations, and could hardly pull their caissons, guns and wagons. The life expectancy of an army horse was a matter of weeks, and Lee could not replenish his losses while the Federals were increasingly well mounted as the war went on. Union cavalry, distinctly inferior in 1861-62, was much superior by 1864. Absent water and roads, the Confederacy lifeline became the railroads. In September, 1863, Lee outwitted the Yankees by shipping Longstreet's elite First Corps from the Virginia to Chickamauga (on the Tennessee-Georgia state line, south of Chattanooga), where they gave Bragg a sudden numerical advantage over Rosecrans. Movement by sea was of course impossible, and the direct route of 500 miles across the mountains had been cut. Eight brigades totaling 12,000 soldiers therefore made a roundabout 965 mile journey in 10-16 days. They traversed eleven different railroads, each with different gauge (width) tracks, so it was impossible to use the same cars. As one staff officer recalled:
:Never before were so many troops moved over such worn-out railways. Never before were such crazy cars--passenger, baggage, mail, coal, box, platform, all and every sort wobbling on the jumping strap iron--used for hauling good soldiers. But we got there nonetheless.<ref> Lacking solid iron rails, none of which were made or imported during the war, the southerners nailed thin straps of iron to wooden rails. John Elwood Clark, ''Railroads in the Civil War: The Impact of Management on Victory and Defeat‎'' (2004) [http://books.google.com/books?id=igU899EAmrQC&pg=PA97&dq=%22hauling+good+soldiers p 97 online] </ref>
Not quite. The artillery and 4,500 infantry arrived too late for the battle of Chickamauga. Bragg therefore had inadequate reserves to clinch success when Longstreet's veterans burst through the Union lines. What might have been a smashing victory became just another bloody standoff (albeit a morale builder for the Confederates--and their last major victory in the west). The Yankees regained numerical advantage when Lincoln reinforced Rosecrans with 20,000 men from the Virginia front; they circled round some 1,200 miles over superior Union railroads in one-third less time.<ref> For scholarly studies see: George Edgar Turner, ''Victory Rode the Rails: The Strategic Place of the Railroads in the Civil War'' (1953, reprinted 1992); also Jeffrey N. Lash, "Joseph E. Johnston and the Virginia Railways, 1861-62." ''Civil War History'' (1989) 35(1): 5-27; and Allen W. Trelease, "A Southern Railroad at War: The North Carolina Railroad and the Confederacy," ''Railroad History'' (1991) (164): 5-41. There is a good, short article in the Macmillan ''Encyclopedia of the Confederacy'' (1993), reprinted in [http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0028649168/o/qid=961091276/sr=8-1/ref=aps_sr_b_1_3/102-8214099-8103338 ''The Confederacy'' (1998)]</ref>
By 1864 Grant and Sherman realized the weakest point of the armies opposing them was the decrepitude of the southern infrastructure and deliberately sought to wear it down. Cavalry raids were the favorite device, with instructions to ruin railroads and bridges. Sherman's insight was deeper. He focused on the trust the rebels had in their Confederacy as a living nation, and he set out to destroy that trust. "I propose to demonstrate the vulnerability of the South, and make its inhabitants feel that war and ruin are synonymous terms." It took a while to secure the approval of Lincoln and Grant, for Sherman's plan was to ignore the Confederate army and strike instead at the Confederate nation. Sherman's "March To the Sea," from Atlanta to Savannah in fall, 1864, burned and broke and ruined every part of the industrial, commercial, transportation and agricultural infrastructure it touched, but the actual damage was confined to a swath of territory totaling about 15% of Georgia. Much more important than the twisted rails, smoldering main streets, dead cattle, burning barns and ransacked houses was the bitter realization among civilians and soldiers throughout the remaining Confederacy that if they persisted, sooner or later their homes and communities would receive the same treatment.* Sherman, who unlike Grant had been deeply involved in the Seminole War, knew that the way to defeat Indians was to strike at their villages and especially their food supply, and that winter campaigns especially effective. Thus Sherman struck at Georgia in October, November and December, and while Grant and Lee were in quiet winter quarters in the next three months, Sherman's army moved north through the Carolinas in a campaign even more devastating than the March Through Georgia.<ref>Hattaway & Jones p 452; Foote 2:709 Glatthaar 6</ref>
==See also==
* Donald, David ''et al.'' ''The Civil War and Reconstruction'' (latest edition 2001); excellent 700 page survey
* Fellman, Michael et al. ''This Terrible War: The Civil War and its Aftermath'' (2nd ed. 2007), excellent 544 page survey
* Ford, Lacy K., ed. ''A Companion to the Civil War and Reconstruction.'' Blackwell, (2005). 518 pp. 23 essays by scholars [http://www.amazon.com/Companion-Reconstruction-Blackwell-Companions-American/dp/0631215514/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209196349&sr=8-1 excerpt and text search]
* Goldin, Claudia D., and Frank D. Lewis, "The Economic Cost of the American Civil War: Estimates and Implications," ''Journal of Economic History'' 35#2 (June 1975), pp. 299-326 [http://www.jstor.org/pss/2119410 in JSTOR]
* Heidler, David Stephen, ed. ''Encyclopedia of the American Civil War: A Political, Social, and Military History'' (2002), 1600 entries in 2700 pages in 5 vol or 1-vol editions; very good basic reference