The High Watermark of the Confederacy.

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Jun 22, 2018
John Batchelder coined the phrase "The High Water Mark of the Confederacy" in reference to the furthest point north reached by Confederate troops during the Battle of Gettysburg. But, was this really the highest point at which Confederate forces pierced the North during the Civil War?

Many battles and skirmishes took place during the war. Some might argue that the Battle of Portland Harbor, also known as the Battle of Casco Bay should be considered, or the Confederate Raid on St. Alban's Vermont, as a northernmost piercing-point of the Confederacy.

What do you think should be the working definition of "High Water Mark" when it comes to consideration of the Confederacy into Northern territory? Also, what do you consider to be the actual High Water Mark of the Confederacy?
 
John Batchelder coined the phrase "The High Water Mark of the Confederacy" in reference to the furthest point north reached by Confederate troops during the Battle of Gettysburg. But, was this really the highest point at which Confederate forces pierced the North during the Civil War?

Many battles and skirmishes took place during the war. Some might argue that the Battle of Portland Harbor, also known as the Battle of Casco Bay should be considered, or the Confederate Raid on St. Alban's Vermont, as a northernmost piercing-point of the Confederacy.

What do you think should be the working definition of "High Water Mark" when it comes to consideration of the Confederacy into Northern territory? Also, what do you consider to be the actual High Water Mark of the Confederacy?

While the phrase is meant to indicate the farthest point on Cemetery Ridge that the Confederates reached during Pickett's Charge, it’s also a metaphor indicating the point at which the momentum of the Confederacy itself reached its zenith and then began to recede. As the defeated Southern troops flowed back to their lines, the tide would continue to go out for the Confederacy in battle after battle, until it disappeared altogether. The High Water Mark of the Rebellion Monument on the battlefield is meant to signify the turning point not only of the Battle of Gettysburg, but of the entire war. The term is not identifying that specific geographic location as being the northernmost point of conflicts in the war, per se.

I think the "working definition" is fine as it is, and the actual "High Water Mark of the Confederacy," both for Pickett's Charge and the Confederacy itself, was indeed that Copse of Trees on the Gettysburg battlefield.
 
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As claude said, it's metaphorical, not literally geographical. Ironically, before the battle of Gettysburg was joined, most of the Army of Northern Virginia was north of the Army of the Potomac; the "northern" army entered the battlefield from the south.

The "High Water Mark" signifies the closest the Confederates came to winning the war and their independence. As you'll probably see here, people have different ideas as to just when that might have been. It should also be noted that for all the attention given to the eastern theater and the Union's battles against Lee and the ANV, the war was largely decided in the west. Still, a truly decisive victory over the AofP would have been tremendously beneficial to the Confederate cause, which brings me to my selection for the High Water Mark - the moment Stonewall Jackson was wounded at Chancellorsville.

Welcome to the forum!
 
If you read accounts of Gettysburg written by the participants immediately after the battle, I believe that you will find that they saw it as just another fight and the "High Water Mark" business came about in retrospect long after the battle.
 
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The second before they fired upon Fort Sumter...
The literal most northern point they reached - The voyage of the CSS Shenandoah.
Cheers,
USS ALASKA

Many consider Lee's action's towards Harrisburg, PA as the northernmost land combat of the Civil War. Harrisburg is the state capital and is north of Gettysburg. He threatened the city twice, during the Antietam and Gettysburg campaigns and there was some skirmishing there in 1863. The Confederates also burned Chambersburg, PA in 1864, a town just northwest of Gettysburg.
 
While the phrase is meant to indicate the farthest point on Cemetery Ridge that the Confederates reached during Pickett's Charge, it’s also a metaphor indicating the point at which the momentum of the Confederacy itself reached its zenith and then began to recede. As the defeated Southern troops flowed back to their lines, the tide would continue to go out for the Confederacy in battle after battle, until it disappeared altogether. The High Water Mark of the Rebellion Monument on the battlefield is meant to signify the turning point not only of the Battle of Gettysburg, but of the entire war. The term is not identifying that specific geographic location as being the northernmost point of conflicts in the war, per se.

I think the "working definition" is fine as it is, and the actual "High Water Mark of the Confederacy," both for Pickett's Charge and the Confederacy itself, was indeed that Copse of Trees on the Gettysburg battlefield.
By your definition I'll go with Vicksburg.
 
Seriously? We're now down to complaining about someone who employed a bit of poetic license to make a larger point?

Wow. Just wow.
 
It is a convenient term for attracting tourists, but should not be taken to imply historical accuracy.
 
John Batchelder coined the phrase "The High Water Mark of the Confederacy" in reference to the furthest point north reached by Confederate troops during the Battle of Gettysburg. But, was this really the highest point at which Confederate forces pierced the North during the Civil War?

Many battles and skirmishes took place during the war. Some might argue that the Battle of Portland Harbor, also known as the Battle of Casco Bay should be considered, or the Confederate Raid on St. Alban's Vermont, as a northernmost piercing-point of the Confederacy.

What do you think should be the working definition of "High Water Mark" when it comes to consideration of the Confederacy into Northern territory? Also, what do you consider to be the actual High Water Mark of the Confederacy?
 
Geographically, your points are well taken.

Nonetheless, within the full context of the war a better metaphor is The Confederacy at Flood Tide as distinguished from the popular notion of the Confederacy at High Tide. The latter expression is generally associated with Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg, or secondarily, the Rebel attack on Starkweather’s Hill at Perryville, Kentucky. However, the story of the Confederacy’s most opportune period for winning independence involved developments in Europe, Virginia, Washington, Maryland, Kentucky, Mississippi and even Missouri and Arkansas.

Although it lasted only six months from June to December 1862, the rising tide flooded all theaters of the war. It was not an isolated surge in Maryland or Kentucky. For example, at Prairie Grove, Arkansas in early December 1862 more Missourians fought to win their state for the South than fought to keep it in the Union. Moreover, the Confederacy’s flood tide was not limited to military factors. It also swelled within the sectors of diplomacy, politics, and espionage. For instance, on July 4, 1862 the Confederacy signed a secret contract with a leading British warship builder for two deep-water ironclads superior to anything in the US Navy and capable of crossing the Atlantic.

The Confederacy never came closer to diplomatic recognition than in the autumn of 1862. After learning of the Union rout at Second Bull Run, in mid-September British Prime Minister Plamerston advocated intervention. In an exchange of letters with Foreign Secretary John Russell—who held a post comparable to the US Secretary of State albeit somewhat more prestigious—Palmerston wrote: “The Federals got a very complete smashing, and it seems not altogether unlikely that still greater disasters await them, and that even Washington or Baltimore may fall into the hands of the Confederates. If this should happen, would it not be time for us to consider whether . . . England and France might not address the contending parties and recommend an arrangement upon the basis of separation?” Russell agreed and added that if mediation failed, “we ought ourselves to recognize the Southern states as an independent state.”

U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward instructed his ambassador to Great Britain to inform Palmerston’s government that any attempt to intervene in America’s Civil War would result in a break in diplomatic relations with the U.S. thereby implying that war between Britain and the US would likely result.

Such a war would have challenged both sides. Although it would be hard for Britain to maintain an army in America, her powerful navy might have ended the federal blockade of Southern ports, and even blockaded Northern harbors. Contrary to popular belief, the Monitor and Merrimack were not the first ironclad warships. The British and French began building bigger and faster deep-water ironclads before America’s Civil war started.

As one of the weapons used by the Union to reverse the Confederate tide, the Emancipation Proclamation was more controversial than commonly supposed. Contrary to popular belief, many contemporaries were confused, critical, and frightened by its implications. Major General George McClellan, among others, believed it was a deliberate attempt to incite a slave rebellion in the South.

Even President Lincoln admitted the possibility of such insurrections before he issued the proclamation. On September 13, 1862 he replied to a delegation of Chicago abolitionists visiting Washington that he recognized the potential “consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South” that such a proclamation might provoke. Whatever the moral benefits, or immoral consequences, of emancipation he “view[ed] the matter as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the [Confederate] rebellion.''

Whatever his intent, the proclamation led to an uproar about its potential to incite slave rebellions. Ultimately, however, there was a subtle but important difference in the language between the preliminary version—issued shortly after the battle of Antietam in September 1862—and the final version issued on January 1, 1863. Lincoln added the following paragraph, which was altogether missing from the September version:

And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence; and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor faithfully for reasonable wages.
In June 1862 Washington brimmed with expectations of a Confederate collapse. The first six months of the year provided a string of federal victories in the West. They began in January at Mill Springs, Kentucky and continued with the surrender of 14,000 Rebels at Fort Donelson in February, further advanced with Confederate ejection from Missouri in March after the battle of Pea Ridge, and culminated with the repulse of the supreme Confederate counter-offensive at Shiloh in April together with the surrender of the fortifications on Island Number 10 in the Mississippi River.

In May the South’s largest city, New Orleans, surrendered to a Union fleet that fought past the city’s downstream fortifications. When Memphis was occupied in early June only a single Rebel outpost at Vicksburg prevented Union commerce from flowing down the Ohio, Mississippi and Missouri rivers to export markets through New Orleans. By June Union armies threatened outnumbered Confederates in Mississippi and eastern Tennessee. Chattanooga, the gateway to Atlanta, appeared likely to fall. There was almost no organized Rebel force contesting the control of Missouri, which was the most important slave state entirely west of the Mississippi River.

Union prospects were also favorable in the East where George McClellan commanded the largest army ever assembled in the Western hemisphere. His troops were so close to the Confederate capital at Richmond, Virginia many set their watches by the city’s church bells.

Only in Europe did developments start to lean toward the Confederacy as the effects of a cotton shortage made textile interests, and their sizeable ecosystem, anxious to put an end to the war.

Virginia's Seven Days campaign started the Confederate surge. Before the campaign began Washington’s expectations of a Confederate collapse seemed justified. General Robert E. Lee admitted as much when he wrote Lieutenant General Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson, “unless McClellan can be driven out of his entrenchments he will move by positions under cover of his heavy guns within shelling distance of Richmond.” Thereafter it would only be a matter of time before Richmond would need to be evacuated.

But the unexpected did happen. In a nearly continuous week of fighting starting on June 26, Robert E. Lee’s smaller army relentlessly drove McClellan back twenty miles to a defensive redoubt on the James River under the protective guns of a Union naval flotilla. Lee’s method was to concentrate superior numbers at the points of attack and to demoralize McClellan with persistent assaults. Once ensconced at the James River, Lincoln could not persuade McClellan to resume an offensive without the latter demanding sizeable reinforcements.

After the Seven Days the opposing sides struggled to grasp the advantage in July and August. Lee convincingly gained it in the East with a smashing victory at Second Bull Run.

As the federal armies moved only slowly toward crucial objectives in the West, such as Vicksburg and Chattanooga, the Rebels seized the initiative. First, cavalry raids disrupted federal supply lines and further slowed-down the advance of the numerically superior Union armies. Later General Braxton Bragg innovatively used railroads to quickly move his army from Mississippi to east Tennessee where he launched an offensive into Kentucky in conjunction with Major General Edmund Kirby Smith.

In the Trans-Mississippi, Major General Thomas Hindman used recently enacted conscription laws and recruiting missions into Missouri to build an army strong enough to challenge the federals for control of the “Show Me” state. Missouri was uniquely important to the theater that she dominated economically. The state’s White population was greater than the combined number of Whites in the remaining parts of the Trans-Mississippi. In 1860 Missouri had about 20,000 factory workers whereas the entire Confederacy west of the Mississippi, excluding Missouri, had but 15,000.

Disappointed with lack of military progress, Lincoln and the Radical Republicans launched new initiatives of their own. One appointed Major General John Pope to lead a second Union army in Virginia. In contrast to McClellan, Pope readily extended the war to Virginia civilians thought to be disloyal to the Union. Additionally, Major General Henry Halleck was summoned from Mississippi to Washington to become general in chief of all Union armies.

In response, the Confederacy’s launched military and political initiatives to quickly win the war in the East. Lee was hopeful he could beat a Union army—presumably demoralized by its loss at Second Bull Run—north of the Potomac River. Such a victory might lead Northerners to conclude the war was not worth the cost required to coerce the Southern states back into the Union. Instead, Northerners might reason it was better to let the Southerners depart in peace, given that there was no realistic reason to fear the Confederacy would attempt to conquer the free states of the North.

During the Maryland Campaign, both sides would learn important lessons affecting the future of the war. When the campaign was over, Southerners realized they could no longer expect that Lee’s army would acquire a significant number of recruits merely by moving into the state. If he was to have any chance of gaining substantial recruits, he must at least win a decisive victory north of the Potomac.

From the Union’s viewpoint, Lincoln was perhaps never so discouraged as during the Maryland Campaign. His own cabinet threatened to disintegrate after it learned he had removed Pope from command and replaced him with McClellan whom the most radical of Radical Republicans considered a traitor. Attorney General Bates quoted the president as saying he “felt almost ready to hang himself.”

Meanwhile Confederate military initiatives began in the western and Trans-Mississippi regions during the late summer and autumn 1862. The Confederates entered Kentucky with small but decisive victories at Richmond and Munfordville. The federal army under Major General Don Carlos Buell that had targeted Chattanooga was caught unprepared. For a time Buell’s route to his supply base at Louisville was cut off. But lack of cooperation between Smith and Bragg left Bragg’s army too short of supplies to hold his blocking position.

Consequently, the Kentucky campaign culminated in a battle at Perryville where the leaders of both sides were plagued by erroneous situational awareness. The Confederates falsely believed only a portion of Buell’s army was present. Similarly, the Yankees fought the battle with only one of their available three corps because a freak acoustic shadow and poor communications prevented Buell from realizing for most of the day that a sizeable battle was in progress.

Attempting to draw pressure away from the Rebel armies in Kentucky, Confederate Major Generals Earl Van Dorn and Sterling Price decided to invade west Tennessee from Mississippi. Their first step was to conquer the largest federal garrison in the district at Corinth, Mississippi. The effort failed in a two-day battle in early October.

In September, Hindman’s Confederate army moved into Missouri but he was personally gone for a month, having been summoned 200 miles back from the field to consult fruitlessly with the department’s theater commander. Nonetheless, the Rebels got a good chance to battle for Missouri in early December but failed at Prairie Grove. Thereafter, Missourians deserted Hindman’s army either to join guerrillas at home or drop out of the war altogether.

While the Confederacy was at flood tide Lincoln concluded a change in war goals toward slave emancipation was his most powerful option for regaining the initiative. He approached the measure carefully for two reasons.

His first concern was that the Border States of Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri might abandon the Union war effort and possibly even switch to the other side. When abolitionist Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner visited him on Independence Day 1862 to urge the president to eradicate slavery, Lincoln refused because he felt that such a maneuver might cause those states to secede.

Only nine days before issuing the September 22 Emancipation Proclamation Lincoln still worried about the impact of such a proposal on the loyalty of the Border States. In reply to a delegation of Chicago abolitionists who advocated the step at a meeting in the White House, Lincoln stated: “I will mention another thing, though it meet only your scorn and contempt. There are fifty thousand bayonets in the Union armies from the border slave States. It would be a serious matter if, in consequence of a proclamation such as you desire, they should go over to the rebels . . . ”

The second reason for approaching emancipation carefully was that Lincoln needed a legal argument for contradicting his 1861 inaugural address pledge that he had “no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so . . . ”

Nonetheless, he quickly reasoned that the eleven states in rebellion had forfeited their rights to protection under the constitution. That is why the Emancipation Proclamation only applied to the states in rebellion and not the Border States. After such a proclamation he could foresee that victory in the war must ultimately lead to an end of slavery throughout the country. He urged the Border States to do so voluntarily, even if gradually. He even pledged financial aid for compensated emancipation, although Lincoln scholar Paul Finkelman believes the president realized congress was unlikely to approve it.

A study of the flood tide period enables Civil War students to learn lessons presaging the denouement for the rest of the war. As noted above, some aspects of the war were more important than commonly supposed and others are more controversial. Consideration of the six months from mid-June to mid-December 1862—from diplomatic, political, and multiple geographic viewpoints—provides integrated insights into the war’s characteristics that cannot be realized by studying each sector in isolation, or from the usual perspectives presently dominating the Civil War narrative.
 
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