Total War?

[samgrant]

Rosie, Shane, Grant and/or anyone interested in taking a stab,


About two years ago I went to a lecture titled, Was the Civil War a Total War? The speaker, and darn it if I forget her name, went to great lengths to say that the Civil War was not a "total war" (involving all aspects of culture, society, civilian population and resources, etc). After listening in on this discussion for awhile, I am curious to know if any of you think that the Civil War was total war, possibly an aspect of it...maybe Sherman's March to the Sea?

Bart


I was about to suggest to Bart that this might be a good topic for which to open a new thread, but decided to cut out the middle man and open the thread myself.

Historians have debated this question for years, now it's our turn.

Knock yourselves out.

 

[JerseyBart]

You thief in the night. You plagarizing thief. Where's my lawyer??? Just kidding. Thank you for reposting it. It makes me think that I actually have a clue (kinda, sorta) now that someone smarter than I took an interest in my question.

I was going to do the same thing when I noticed that the post got lost in the shuffle of an active thread. But go to town on it. The speaker I listened to said nay. What do you good folks think?


Enjoy.

Bart

 

[johan_steele]

First what is Total War? If it is defined as the novel approach of taking the war to the civilians as a first time ever as is often charged against Sherman... Well Sherman was neither the first or most brutal by any stretch of the mind. Such a charge requires either a willful ignorance of military history or not bothering to look at the last 2000 years or so of history.

Total War was waged, quite effectively, by the Romans & Mongols to name just two of the more effective practitioners of the ancient world. Then of coarse there were the French in Spain, English in India, Russians etc in a more 19th Century light.

The Romans gave us the idea of "abject lesson" w/ places like Carthage, Juerselum and the temple mount to name just two. We get the term decimate & depopulate from the Romans. Sowing salt on fertile ground leaving no stone upon another leaving a city or region empty of inhabitants. That is total war. Later putting a city to the sword was outright common and giving a city to the army for a couple days was how some armies of the Dark & Middle ages were paid! Noble Knights of the Crusades? Posh.

The Mongols took mobility & psychological Warfare to a whole new level... one that has never been surpassed; truly epitomizing the idea that wars are fought in the will IMHO. They encouraged the belief in the supernatural & Demonic and scared the wits out of opponents... destroying EVERYTHING that resisted them. Total War? Oh yeah, the standard by which the premise should be judged.

The French in Spain did everything Shermans men are accused of doing... and actually did it.

Total Wars? By what definition? Well Total War equals treating enemy civilains as combatants and treating them as such. No quarter asked and none given... sounds a lot more like what happened to the Native Americans in the US than the citizens of Georgia, SC & NC at the hands of Shermans men. Or in the Pacific in WWII.

Frankly, NOT fighting a total war is a relatively new concept.

"Honor is fine and good but it fails to win battles." Bayan of the Hundred Eyes. A Mongol General who never lost a battle... and spearheaded Kubli Khans conquest of China.

 

[hoosier]

Not questioning any of Johan's points about the Romans, Mongols, French, and/or assorted others who waged total war both prior and subsequent.

But getting back to the Civil War, my opinion is that, although the Civil War didn't start out as total war, it was getting close to it by 1864.

Grant, noting that the Shenandoah Valley, in addition to providing the Army of Northern VA with enough agricultural bounty to prevent their supply situation from getting worse than it was, also provided them with a convenient route by which to launch offensives aimed toward the North, directed Sheridan to lay waste to the Valley and leave it in such condition that, as Grant put it, a crow flying across it would have to carry its own rations.

Sheridan did not, perhaps, devastate the Valley to quite the extent that the letter of Grant's directive would have indicated, but his men burned out many a once-prosperous and productive farm, including a number belonging to Unionists, since Sheridan didn't really have time to stop and do a thorough check into the political allegiance of each landowner his troops encountered along the way.

 

[trice]

In general, there was a brief period before the Civil War where western civilization made an attempt to restrict warfare to "professionals". This began in reaction to the horrors of the Thirty Years War and generally ended with the wars of the French Revolution/the Napoleonic Wars as far as I can see.

Even within that period, having a European army march through your province was tough -- particularly if they happened to be Russians or Prussians. A lot of what happened depended upon the commander involved. Napoleon's Marshal Davout ruled his men with an iron discipline -- and he would use that control to strip your province of the last ****hing and grain of wheat if he felt he needed to do so to support his troops. Marshal Soult OTOH was one of those who became wealthy from plunder and Massena -- well, Massena had been a smuggler before he became one of Napoleon's most skilled soldiers; he was an expert at the shakedown of an occupied province, friendly or allied.

I think it was no accident that Grotius, the brilliant Dutchman credited with the beginiing of much of international law on war, reached adulthood during the Thirty Years War. I think the horrors of those days had much to do with what he wrote and the thinking of what followed. That thinking in turn gave us the attempt at formalized warfare in the 1700s that fell apart with the French Revolution and the levee en masse.

The time of the American Civil War shows us two major efforts to codify the "laws of war", to try to make it more "civilized". Of great importance is the Lincoln administration's decision (on Halleck's recommndation) to have Dr. Lieber write the "Lieber Code", the first codified set of regulations on this matter. At the same time, a group was meeting in Europe to discuss the same matters, studying Lieber's ideas as well as their own, and eventually leading to the first Geneva Convention a little later.

"Total War" had been the usual type of war in human history, rarely restrained, and certainly subject to no specific set of rules or laws other than those soldiers themselves made and enforced. Reaction to the Civil War and the Crimean War and a few others led to this mid-1860s change in international practice, this codifying of principals. The wars since testify to the success or failure of the attempt.

Regards,
Tim

 

[FSPowers]

IMHO the CW started out as a "gentlemens" war, but at time wore on, it became necessary to focus not only on the enemy armies, but on the means of support, like factories, arsenals, and farms. Sherman was the best example, but Grant, during the Vicksburg Campaign, had cut himself off from his supplies and had his army live off the farms while marching on Jackson. This also denyed supplies to Pemberton and Joe Johnston.

Also, the North was not the only ones, one of Lee's objectives diring the Second Invasion was to supply his army from the Pennsylvania farms. This was not, IMHO, as destructive as Sherman's March to the Sea, but it had the effect of feeding Lee's troops while denying supplies to Meade's.

No doubt that "Total War" is not new, but the CW made it a science.

 

[trice]

...
Also, the North was not the only ones, one of Lee's objectives diring the Second Invasion was to supply his army from the Pennsylvania farms. This was not, IMHO, as destructive as Sherman's March to the Sea, but it had the effect of feeding Lee's troops while denying supplies to Meade's.

While no one really knows "from the horse's mouth" what Lee's plan was for the invasion of the North in 1863 (or 1863, for that matter), one thing is very clear: he was intensely interested in Harrisburg.

There can be lots of reasons for that, but one not widely discussed is that Harrisburg was a vital link in Northern RR lines, as well as a manufacturing and repair center for RR engines and cars.

There were really only three major East-West RR routes available to the Union. The NY Central paralleled the Erie Canal. The Baltimore & Ohio was very vulnerable to Confederate raids and with Lee above the Potomac, it was already cut. The Pennsylvania RR ran through Harrisburg. As a result, a Rebel force in Harrisburg was like a foot on the Union's economic throat.

By cutting the RR there, Lee could cause vast disruption. Replacement of the bridges he could destroy would be a major task; destruction of the yards and shops in Harrisburg a major industrial catastrophe. The longer the traffic interruption, the greater the impact.

In particular, most of the coal production out of the Ohio/WestVirginia/Western Pensylvania area was carried on either the B&O or the Pennsylvania RRs. If Lee could keep those broken up, industrial production in the NJ-NY and New England would fall off. The surplus of western agricultural products moving East would also have been choked, leading to spikes in prices in the East and in export -- panic buying and hoarding might start. Perhaps more important, the buildup of coal for winter heating in the East would be stopped, leading to a very cold Winter of 1863-64 for the homefront, which would inevitably mean an increase in sickness and death in the civilian population.

The Union could not have permitted Lee to remain in control of Harrisburg. IMHO, Lee was attempting to grab this objective, destroy the war-related facilites there (RR bridges and yards, factories, etc. -- much like Sherman), then adopt a strong position where he could strike a Union force coming to him on grounds of his choosing. Hooker/Meade's rapid move North and the separation from Stuart left this plan adrift, I think.

War is a hard business. Lee's brand of "total war" may have been nicer than Sherman's by a bit; it was at least more disciplined. But Lee was a soldier who did not shy from hard choices. Given the chance, he would have done what I outlined above because it was the proper thing for a commander in his position to do. I think he would have regretted the suffering his course would have brought to civilians in the North (the possible hunger, cold, and disease), but he would have done what he saw as needful to his duty to win for the Confederacy. Even under the strong discipline Lee was able to exert on his men, there were outrages in Chambersburg before the battle of Gettysburg.

Regards,
Tim

 

[whitworth]

Harrisburg

There is no doubt that Lee's objective, as seen in the OR's, was Harrisburg and its important railroad junction.

Unfortunately we'll never know how long Lee could have stayed in any one location in PA, besides Gettysburg. Lee, as was proved by Gettysburg, could not engage in more than a week's battle, due to a shortage of artillery ammunition, that did occur and would have occurred in the Harrisburg area.

Lee, like most in his southern region, would have regarded railroads as private property, and repairable as private property. A concept that would require much time for reconstruction.

The United States saw the railroads as a necessity for war and spent millions on railroad repair and bridge construction. Sherman's railroad constuction corps rebuilt southern railroads because they were necessary in the waging of war, with little regard as to ownership.

Any damage to PA bridges was negligible, as a lasting effect. Only days after Gettysburg, a Union army construction corps was rebuilding bridges and repairing railroad rails and beds.
By 1863, Lee only had the logistics to raid Pennsylvania. Confederates has no ability to make a long lodgment on Pennsylvania soil. There could not be a lasting effect on Union rail logistics in PA.

 

[samgrant]

I promise I'll do it. A review of Grimsley's book The Hard Hand of War in which he distinguishes 'Hard War' with 'Total War'. I'm so lazy. one day in Book section.