New York Times: Disunion: Modern Historians Revisit and Reconsider the Civil War from Lincoln's Election to the Emancipation Proclamation - Hardcover

Risen, Clay; Kalogerakis, George; Widmer, Ted; New York, The

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1579129285 ISBN 13: 9781579129286

Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal, 2013

Synopsis

A major new collection of modern commentary? from scholars, historians, and Civil War buffs?on the significant events of the Civil War, culled from The New York Times' popular Disunion on-line journal Since its debut on November 6, 2010, Disunion, The New York Times' acclaimed journal about the Civil War, has published hundreds of original articles and won multiple awards, including 'Best History Website' from the New Media Institute and the History News Network. Following the chronology of the secession crisis and the Civil War, the contributors to Disunion, who include modern scholars, journalists, historians, and Civil War buffs, offer ongoing daily commentary and assessment of the Civil War as it unfolded.Now, for the first time, this fascinating and historically significant commentary has been gathered together and organized in one volume. In The New York Times: Disunion, historian Ted Widmer, has selected more than 100 articles that cover events beginning with Lincoln's presidential victory through the Emancipation Proclamation. Topics include everything from Walt Whitman's wartime diary to the bloody guerrilla campaigns in Missouri and Kansas. Esteemed contributors include William Freehling, Adam Goodheart, and Edward Ayers, among others.The book also compiles new essays that have not been published on the Disunion site by contributors and well-known historians such as David Blight, Gary Gallagher, and Drew Gilpin Faust. Topics include the perspective of African-American slaves and freed men on the war, the secession crisis in the Upper South, the war in the West (that is, past the Appalachians), the war in Texas, the international context, and Civil War?era cartography. Portraits, contemporary etchings, and detailed maps round out the book.

About this title

About the Author

The New York Times is regarded as the world's preeminent newspaper. Its news coverage is known for its exceptional depth and breadth, with reporting bureaus throughout the United States and in 26 foreign countries. Winner of 112 Pulitzer Prizes, The Times has the largest circulation of any seven-day newspaper in the U.S.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

The New York Times DISUNION

106 articles from The New York Times Opinionator

By TED WIDMER, CLAY RISEN, GEORGE KALOGERAKIS

Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc.

Copyright © 2013 The New York Times
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-57912-928-6

Contents

Acknowledgements...........................................................
vi
Introduction...............................................................
vii
Chapter 1 Secession........................................................
1
Chapter 2 The War Begins...................................................
99
Chapter 3 Bull run.........................................................
159
Chapter 4 1862.............................................................
233
Chapter 5 The War Expands..................................................
267
Chapter 6 Toward Emancipation..............................................
389
List of Contributors.......................................................
439
Index......................................................................
445

CHAPTER 1

Secession

On December 20, 1860, just 42 days after the election of Abraham Lincoln, SouthCarolina seceded from the United States. In the following months 10 more stateswould follow suit, eventually forming the Confederate States of America. Then,on April 12, 1861, Confederate forces under Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard, a formercommandant at West Point, launched an attack on the Union soldiers at FortSumter, an artificial island in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, precipitatingthe Civil War. These two events seem, in retrospect, to follow one fromthe other. But did they?

Historians have long debated whether widespread secession and war were,in the long view, inevitable. There can be little doubt that Lincoln's electionguaranteed that at least several slaveholding states would secede. Though Lincolnthe candidate took pains to emphasize that he would not move againstslavery where it already existed, and as president-elect remained studiouslysilent on the question, many Southerners believed that the man from Illinoisand his new and newly empowered Republican Party would move aggressivelyto limit slavery's expansion, isolating the South and putting the institution ona short road to extinction.

But secession was not an immediate, sudden step for every state. Thoughsix states—Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana and Texas—hadjoined South Carolina by the end of January 1861, the final four—Virginia,Arkansas, North Carolina and Tennessee—did not leave the Union until afterthe war began. Four more slave states—Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky andMissouri—remained in the Union. In reality, secession was a fractious, drawn-outprocess in most places, with degrees of pro-Union sentiment pushing backagainst secession advocates. In some parts of the Confederacy, primarily theAppalachian Mountain regions of Virginia and Tennessee, Unionist sentimentremained a force throughout the war, generating significant guerrilla activity.Western Virginia undertook a "reverse" secession as a result of the WheelingConventions of May and June 1861, leading to the creation of the loyal state ofWest Virginia.

Though a war was not inevitable, Lincoln did everything he could to igniteone. He understood that the Union would be hobbled without the South'sresources; more importantly, he understood that a successful secession over apolitical dispute would fatally undermine the core premise of American democracyas a system for working out political differences. And if the Union were tobe re-formed, it had to happen quickly; should the South win diplomatic recognition,it would be nearly impossible to force it to rejoin without completelydefeating it in battle. While that is precisely what it took to end secession, Lincolnwas probably still correct in his calculation: allowing the South to gaindiplomatic recognition might well have meant fighting not just Richmond, butLondon and even Paris as well.

It is harder to determine just how eager the Confederacy was for war. Certainly,many of its military and political leaders were keen to fight. But otherscautioned against rushing into conflict, recognizing how ill prepared the newcountry was for a drawn-out war. Fatally, the South did not have the deliberativepolitical structure, let alone the vibrant public sphere, to allow for sucha discussion. Put simply, the same hotheads who pulled the South out of theUnion were then able to dictate the speed with which it went to war. Ratherthan negotiate a deal over the Union installations on Confederate soil still heldby Northern forces—most notably Fort Sumter—the Confederacy simply occupiedthem, or demanded their surrender. It was precisely the pretext that Lincolnwas looking for to begin a fight, and he soon found it, in Charleston Harbor.

The Last Ordinary Day

By ADAM GOODHEART

Nov. 1, 1860

Seven score and 10 years ago, a little Pennsylvania town drowsedin the waning light of an Indian summer. Almost nothing hadhappened lately that the two local newspapers found worthyof more than a cursory mention. The fall harvest was in; grain pricesheld steady. A new ice cream parlor had opened in the Eagle Hotel onChambersburg Street. Eight citizens had recently been married; eightothers had died. It was an ordinary day in Gettysburg.

It was an ordinary day in America: one of the last such days for avery long time to come.

In dusty San Antonio, Colonel Robert E. Lee of the U.S. Army hadjust submitted a long report to Washington about recent skirmishesagainst marauding Comanches and Mexican banditti. In Louisiana,William Tecumseh Sherman was in the midst of a tedious week interviewingteenage applicants to the military academy where he servedas superintendent. In Galena, Ill., passers-by might have seen a manin a shabby military greatcoat and slouch hat trudging to work thatThursday morning, as he did every weekday. He was Ulysses Grant,a middle-aged shop clerk in his family's leather-goods store.

Even the most talked-about man in America was, in a certainsense, almost invisible—or at least inaudible.

On Nov. 1, less than a week before Election Day, citizens ofSpringfield, Ill., were invited to view a new portrait of Abraham Lincoln,just completed by a visiting artist and hung in the statehouse'ssenate chamber. The likeness was said to be uncanny, but it was easyenough for viewers to reach their own conclusions, since the sittercould also be inspected in person in his office just across the hall.Politically, however, Lincoln was almost as inscrutable as the paintedcanvas. In keeping with longstanding tradition, he did not campaignat all that autumn; did not so much as deliver a single speech or granta single interview to the press.

Instead, Lincoln held court each day in his borrowed statehouseoffice, behind a desk piled high with gifts and souvenirs that supportershad sent him—including countless wooden knicknacks carvedfrom bits and pieces of fence rails he had supposedly split in hisyouth. He shook hands with visitors, told funny stories and answeredmail. Only one modest public statement from him appeared in theIllinois State Journal that morning: a small front-page ad, sandwichedbetween those for a dentist and a saddle-maker, offering theservices of Lincoln & Herndon, attorneys at law.

The future is always a tough thing to predict—and perhaps it wasespecially so on the first day of that eventful month. Take the oilpainting of Lincoln, for example: it would be obsolete within weekswhen its subject unexpectedly grew a beard. (The distraught portraitisttried to daub in whiskers after the fact, succeeding only inwrecking his masterpiece.) Or, on a grander scale, an article in themorning's New York Herald, using recent census data to project thecountry's growth over the next hundred years. By the late 20th century,it stated confidently, America's population would grow to 300million (pretty close to accurate), including 50 million slaves (a bitoff). But, asked the author, could a nation comprising so many differentpeople and their opinions remain intact for that long? Impossible.

Writing about the past can be almost as tricky. Particularly sowhen the subject is the Civil War, that famously unfinished conflict,with each week bringing fresh reports of skirmishes between the ideologicalrear guards of the Union and Confederate armies, still goingat it with gusto.

In many senses, though, the Civil War is a writer's—and reader's—dream.The 1860s were an unprecedented moment for documentation:for gathering and preserving the details of passing eventsand the texture of ordinary life. Starting just a few years before thewar, America was photographed, lithographed, bound between thecovers of mass-circulation magazines, and reported by the very firstgeneration of professional journalists.

Half a century ago, as the nation commemorated the war's centennial,a scruffy young man from Minnesota walked into the New YorkPublic Library and began scrolling through reels of old microfilm,reading newspapers published all over the country between 1855and 1865. As Bob Dylan would recount in his memoir, "Chronicles:Volume 1," he didn't know what he was looking for, much less whathe would find. He just immersed himself in that time: the fiery oratory,the political cartoons, the "weird mind philosophies turned ontheir heads," the "epic, bearded characters." But much later, he sworethat this journey deep into the Civil War past became "the all-encompassingtemplate behind everything I would write."

Lincoln Wins. Now What?

By JAMIE MALANOWSKI

Nov. 7, 1860

Yesterday, the start of the most exciting day in the historyof Springfield, Ill., could not wait for the sun. At 3 a.m.,somebody got Election Day started with volleys of cannonfire, and after that there were incessant and spontaneous eruptions ofcheering and singing all day long. A moment of delirium erupted inmid-afternoon, when the city's favorite citizen emerged from his lawoffice and went to vote, taking care to slice his name off the top ofthe ballot so as to prevent accusations that he had voted for himself.After the sun went down, he joined other Republican stalwarts in theCapitol building, where they eagerly received the early returns thatwere trotted over from the telegraph office.

There were no surprises: the long-settled Yankees in Maine andNew Hampshire and pioneering Germans of Michigan and Wisconsindelivered the expected victories. And then came news fromIllinois: "We have stood fine. Victory has come." And then from Indiana:"Indiana over twenty thousand for honest Old Abe."

The throngs in the streets cheered every report, every step towardsthe electoral college number, but news from the big Eastern stateswas coming painfully slowly, and finally the candidate and his closestassociates decamped the capitol and invaded the narrow offices of theIllinois and Mississippi Telegraph Company. The advisers paced thefloorboards, jumping at every eruption of the rapid clacking of Morse'smachine, while the nominee parked on the couch, seemingly at easewith either outcome awaiting him.

It wasn't until after 10 that reportsof victory in Pennsylvania arrived inthe form a telegram from the cannyvote-counter Simon Cameron, thepolitical boss of the Keystone State,who tucked within his state's talliesjoyfully positive news about NewYork: "Hon. Abe Lincoln, Pennaseventy thousand for you. New Yorksafe. Glory enough."

Not until 2 a.m. did official resultsfrom New York arrive, and theexpected close contest in the make-or-breakstate never appeared: the onetimerail-splitter won by 50,000 votes.His men cheered, and broke out intoan impromptu rendition of "Ain't YouGlad You Joined the Republicans?"Outside, pandemonium had beenunleashed, but Abraham Lincolnpartook of none it, and instead put onhis hat and walked home to bed.

"The Republican pulse continuesto beat high," exulted a correspondentfor The New York Times."Chanticleer is perched on the backof the American Eagle, and withflapping wings and a sonorous noteproclaims his joy at the victory. Thereturn for the first Napoleon fromElba did not create a greater excitementthan the returns for the present election."

Well should he sing, for the days of song will end soon enough.Mr. Lincoln is indeed the president-elect, but barely by a whisker,and what exactly one means by "the United States" any more is aptto become a topic of some heated discussion. Lincoln won his parlay,taking 16 of the 17 Northern states that he set his sights upon, includingthe hard-fought New York, and most by a solid majority.

But there were states where he was more lucky than popular, likeCalifornia, where all four candidates polled significant numbers. Lincolnwon only 32.3 percent of the ballots, but managed to eke out a victoryand capture the state's four electoral votes by the wafer-thin marginof 734 votes. A similar, if slightly less dramatic story played out inOregon, where Lincoln's victory margin was fewer than 1,200 votes. Inhis home state of Illinois, facing Mr. Douglas, Mr. Lincoln won by fewerthan 12,000 out of 350,000 votes cast, a clear win but hardly a romp.

The South, of course, presents a vastly different picture. In thestates of Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi,North Carolina, Tennessee and Texas Mr. Lincoln received acombined total of no votes. None. True, his name wasn't even listedon the ballot, but that seems to be a mere technical oversight thatwould have had no great consequence. After all, in Virginia, the largestand wealthiest southern state, Mr. Lincoln was on the ballot, andthere he tallied a total of 1,887 votes, or just 1.1 percent of the totalcast. The results were even worse in Kentucky, his place of birth. Onemight have thought that sheer native pride should have earned himmore than 1,364 of the 146,216 votes cast, but perhaps Kentuckiansresented that he deserted them at such a tender age.

All told, Mr. Lincoln will assume the presidency in March on thestrength of his muscular 180 electoral votes, and despite the puny39.8 percent of the popular vote he accumulated.

The narrowness of this fragile mandate (if that word can evenbe used) naturally invites speculation about what might have been.The year began with Mr. Douglas standing, like Franklin Pierce andJames Buchanan before him, as an electable anti-slavery Northernerwho could be depended on to maintain southern prerogatives. Butfrom the moment last April when fire-eating Southern Democratsmade it clear that they would rather punish Mr. Douglas for his voteon the Kansas-Nebraska Act two years ago than win the White Housein the fall, it was ordained that the Little Giant, so long touted as acertain president-to-be, was steering a doomed vessel.

Yet there were times when his campaign picked up speed, and atsuch moments Mr. Douglas seemed very close to capturing enoughsupport to thwart Mr. Lincoln's northern sweep and deny him hiselectoral college majority. Had that happened, Mr. Douglas would besitting solidly in second place. He would have demonstrated supportboth north and south, and he would offer the South preservation ofthe status quo. That might well have been enough to pacify the recklessSouthern Democrats who shunned him in the spring, and to wintheir support in the House of Representatives.

But for every Douglas surge there was a Douglas blunder. Finaltallies show that wherever Mr. Douglas actually campaigned in NewYork, he won more votes than President Buchanan took when he capturedthe state four years ago. But instead of investing his time in theEmpire State, Mr. Douglas headed into the inhospitable South, wherehe did the seemingly impossible—he managed to make southern votersdislike him even more than they already did. Appearing before a crowdin Virginia, he was asked if the election of Mr. Lincoln would justifysecession. A politician of Mr. Douglas's experience should have knownhow to handle this kind of question with finesse, but instead he offeredthe one answer certain to damage him. No, he told the crowd.

He might have stopped at that, but perhaps figuring that, havingjumped the fence, he may as well have a picnic, he told the crowd, Itis the duty of the president of the United States to enforce the laws ofthe United States, and if Mr. Lincoln is the winner, I will do all in mypower to help the government do so. With that answer, Mr. Douglasdismissed the purported right to secede that the south so cherishes,and surrendered his claim as the only man who could be counted onto keep the union together.

Now that task falls to a president who received fewer than 4 votesin 10; a president who is purely the creature of only one section ofthe country; a president who, apart from one undistinguished termin the House of Representatives a decade ago (and a period in thestate legislature), has no experience in public office; a president whocomes from a Republican party that has been stitched together fromvarious interests, who will be asked to work with a Congress whosetwo houses are controlled by Democrats.

The fire eaters in South Carolina have already announced that theywill immediately introduce a bill of secession. But that has been somethingthey have been itching to do for years; as any doctor or firemanwill tell you, sometimes the best way to end a fever or a blaze is to justlet the thing burn out. Not everyone in the South is a slave owner, andnot every slave owner is a disunionist. If any of the firebrands wouldtake the time to listen to what Mr. Lincoln has actually said, they wouldsee that he is no raving abolitionist like Sen. William Seward and hisilk. (Indeed, anti-slavery activist Wendell Phillips sneeringly calls Mr.Lincoln a "huckster" and William Lloyd Garrison says he has "not onedrop of anti-slavery blood in his veins.")

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The New York Times DISUNION by TED WIDMER, CLAY RISEN, GEORGE KALOGERAKIS. Copyright © 2013 The New York Times. Excerpted by permission of Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers, Inc..
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Edition details

• Publisher: Black Dog & Leventhal
• Publication date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1579129285
• ISBN 13: 9781579129286
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 464