American Civil War, 1861-1863

• American System of Mass Production

• Shiloh• Fredericksburg• William Sherman• Ulysses Grant

Northern Advantages

• 25,000,000 freemen to 6,000,000

• 110,000 factories to 18,000

• CSA made 36,000 tons of iron in 1860– PA alone made 580,000

tons

• Railroads, bureaucracy, navy, industrial methods

Southern Advantages

• Geography• Strategy• Military traditions

Key Developments, 1861-1863

• Industry– American System of Mass Production

• Technology– Rifles and Railroads

• Mass armies and mass mobilization

• North better positioned to take advantage of these changes

Quest for Decisive Battle

• First Bull Run, Antietam, Shiloh all attempts to win big battles for big results

• Few of these battles decisive on any level

• Why doesn’t this strategy work?

Shiloh6 April 1862

• Largest CSA offensive of the war to date

• CSA aimed to get interior lines between armies of Grant and Buell

• Five CSA corps operated on separate LOC

• USA surprised, panicked• US troops lost 20,000 men and

retreated 2 miles• But CSA had taken 70%

casualties in first line of attack

A. S. Johnston, considered the finest CSA field commander. Killed at Shiloh

Shiloh, 7 April

• USA reinforced to 50,000 men against 25,000 for CSA

• CSA continued to charge and take high losses

• More casualties in two days than in all previous American wars COMBINED

• 110,000 men fought, more than 24,000 casualties

• How was the war any different?

Veterans of Shiloh

• Sherman– Don’t fight man for man;

don’t order charges– Defeat the enemy’s will, not

its soldiers• Grant

– Attrition as the key, despite the carnage it causes

• Forrest– Aristocratic generals don’t

fight well– Search for a strategy to

target North’s economic edge

Fredericksburg, Dec., 1862

• Attempt to win a big battle and On To Richmond

• Jominian theory suggest a central attack

• Burnside ordered five separate charges. Why?

• USA lost 12,500 to CSA’s 5,000

• Crushing defeat for USA, Jominian approaches

Gettysburg, July 3, 1863

• Strategic alternatives• “There is my enemy,

and there is where I will strike him”

• Federal troops chanted “Fredericksburg” at the defeated Confederates

The New Way of War