A lurker (c’mon people, just comment) sent me this. I pass it along to you.
Update: Eric suggested a change in the title. Which I’ve now made. Also, after watching this a couple of times, I have two thoughts: first, it’s remarkable to see the South’s fortunes wax and wane around key events, including Lee’s second invasion of the North, culminating in Gettysburg; and second, as David intimates in the comments, the spikes in the death toll after major battles are horrible to behold.
Update II: Well, I just watched this again, with a colleague this time, and I was struck by how much time passes after Gettysburg, and how much blood spills, before the war finally ends. In my Civil War class, I make this point. But in the survey, for the mass of the undergraduates I teach, after Pickett’s charge, the war’s pretty much over. I try to talk to them about the 1864 election, using Lincoln’s precarious position in late summer of that year as a way of explaining war fatigue. But this video makes the point more clearly and more powerfully. And I like the music.
Update III: And I’ve changed the title yet again. What a pathetic freak I am. I’ve also now watched the video without the sound, which didn’t add much to experience for me. Changing the title every few hours, though, now that’s blogging gold.
The Edge of the American West 
63 comments
January 18, 2008 at 2:23 pm
eric
That is a work of genius.
But don’t you mean, “U.S. wins”?
January 18, 2008 at 2:37 pm
David Carlton
A little perspective, thank heaven. Beneath all the posturing was a tragedy of horrific proportions, in which neither side exactly covered itself in glory. Lincoln tried to make that point in his Second Inaugural; whatever else the Civil War was, it was the greatest moral failure in American history, on both sides, and if good came out of it with the end of slavery, neither side could really take the credit–certaily not the South, but not really the North either, which only reluctantly adopted the end of slavery as a war aim, out of perceived military necessity. Slavery was a national, not a southern, sin, and it was the nation that suffered for it. Thus, “malice toward none, charity for all”: the proper response to the Civil War was, and is now, humility and atonement.
January 18, 2008 at 2:45 pm
ari
Agreed: to both of the above. Also: fixed.
January 18, 2008 at 2:55 pm
eric
BTW, it appears to have come originally from the Abraham Lincoln Presidential Library and Museum:
Indeed.
January 18, 2008 at 4:50 pm
Levi Stahl
If this came from the Lincoln Library, I have to get there this winter. I already knew that, but this reminds me of how remiss I’ve been. It’s only four hours away, for god’s sake.
January 18, 2008 at 5:14 pm
ari
Welcome back, Levi. I saw your wonderful post on Lincoln. Thanks for providing me with the excuse I’ve been looking for to link.
January 18, 2008 at 5:24 pm
bitchphd
What a beautiful video.
January 18, 2008 at 5:31 pm
bitchphd
It really bears watching several times. Amazing stuff.
Stupid question from someone who did her best to avoid history in college (I know, I was a dumbass): why are the casualties so much higher for the winning side? Is it mostly a function of losing people on the march, or is there some other reason?
January 18, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Megan
Dear god. All those boys.
January 18, 2008 at 5:52 pm
Gdr
The majority of deaths were due to disease and the Union simply had more soldiers. The disparity in battle casualties is because the Union spent much of the war on the offensive and the Confederacy on the defensive.
January 18, 2008 at 5:59 pm
bitchphd
Ah, thank you. Makes sense.
January 18, 2008 at 6:06 pm
ari
Gdr gets it absolutely right. Add to that, there was a lag between tactics and an ill-understood advance in technology: the advent and spread of rifles. Most officers, on both sides — at least at the beginning of the war — were trained in an era of smooth-bore muskets. But most troops eventually fought the Civil War with rifled muskets*, which are much more accurate over much greater distances. By the time that the officers really understood what was going on, political considerations were driving tactics: trying get the war over quickly, so that Lincoln wouldn’t lose the 1864 election. Which meant that even though fighting on the offensive was much bloodier, Grant, especially, kept doing it. Ugly stuff.
Okay, I’m starting to get a bit overheated now. So I’d better stop. But just know: there’s lots more where this came from. Lots more [laughs ominously].
* Think of the difference between a fastball, which spins and goes relatively straight, and a knuckleball, which doesn’t spin and flutters all over the place. And if that doesn’t make sense to you, please understand that this is the Civil War we’re talking about. This is boy stuff. So keep up.
January 18, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Josh
Ugly stuff.
Even uglier is looking at the Western Front of WWI, and realizing that the ACW had happened 50 years previously… and yet no one seemed to have learned anything from it.
January 18, 2008 at 7:20 pm
ari
Indeed. But out of my period. And heaven knows that I never hold forth on issues about which I have no expertise. (Please ignore the blog.)
January 18, 2008 at 8:39 pm
bitchphd
This is boy stuff. So keep up.
Whatever shall I do?
(If we continue the trend Eric started and point out small nuances of subtext in the title, how many more times can we get you to change it?)
January 18, 2008 at 8:41 pm
urbino
How much of a role did generalship play in the differing casualty numbers? My sense of the conventional wisdom (either or both of which could easily be wrong) is that the South’s generals were pretty good, while the Union’s, before Grant’s rise, were a bit bumbling.
One thing I was struck by in the video, though I was vaguely aware of it already, was just how close together Gettysburg and the fall of Vicksburg were. The Confederate leadership must have had a sense that it was just a matter of time, after that.
January 18, 2008 at 9:20 pm
ari
Whatever shall I do?
Swoon. Probably.
How many more times can we get you to change it?
None more times. We’re all set now. For the moment. I think. But stay tuned.
How much of a role did generalship play in the differing casualty numbers?
Maybe lot. Especially if you consider how lousy the Union generals, most notably McClellan, were in the first half of the war. An argument can be made that the conflict should have ended much more quickly, potentially sparing hundreds of thousands of lives.
BUT, assuming such a thing raises serious questions about whether abolition would have been front and center for Lincoln. And now we’re spinning down the counterfactual drain.
Having said that, tactics, particularly battlefield tactics, aren’t really my thing. I’m more a homefront kind of guy. Which is why I always warn the students in my Civil War class that we’re going to spend a lot of time talking about social history than we do about battles. That said, I make sure to spend at least a few minutes per lecture on matters martial. Which, truth be told, is probably silly. Because the students who really want that stuff already know way more about than I ever will.
The South’s generals were pretty good, while the Union’s, before Grant’s rise, were a bit bumbling.
Mostly true, though not as true as the conventional wisdome dictates. There were some very good Union officers, though the Confederacy had more. Again, though, see above about my level of expertise when it comes to military history.
The Confederate leadership must have had a sense that it was just a matter of time, after that.
Yes, I certainly argue that this is the case. The near destruction of Lee’s army, especially, was a huge blow: both symbolically and in the field.
And once again, we’ve arrived at the point where I’m going on and on. Done now.
January 19, 2008 at 9:23 am
paulbeard
For some reason, my American history classes never quite made it to the War of Northern Aggression/Civil War/Late Unpleasantness (you can often tell where someone is from by what they call it). So the ebb and flow of the battles has never been clear to me. I know the names of some major battles (15 years living in Atlanta will do that to you). But this makes it quite clear how much of the blood was spilt in the South, no matter whose it was. This is an interesting survey/intro to the period. One of the trenches in WWI would be worth seeing.
Out of total ignorance, I have often wondered why neither side laid siege to the other’s capitol: I suppose the Union had enough troops to defend theirs but surely taking Richmond (and why there, so close to Washington? Why not Atlanta or Jackson?) would have crippled the Confederacy.
Not that major movies get history right, but there is something in Rhett Butler’s words about how gallant and doomed those boys and their feudal society were.
January 19, 2008 at 9:28 am
ari
Both sides wanted the other’s capital. But that prize was no easy get. Grant’s long, hard road to Richmond was littered with bodies. Earning him the title “Butcher” in the Northern press. Winning a war has a way of redeeming reputations.
January 19, 2008 at 9:30 am
Al Billings
I’m an American and did a bunch of history work during my MA but I’ve never actually studied our civil war at any depth. Are there particular texts that you consider essential to understanding the history of the war, socially and as it progressed?
January 19, 2008 at 9:40 am
paulbeard
Ah, history is written by the victors (and I don’t mean the raisin grower from Fresno). I’ll look for an answer to Al Billings’ query. I may have to read up myself.
January 19, 2008 at 9:42 am
silbey
A large part of the issue is that industrial mass war simply causes lots and lots and lots of casualties, no matter how you fight it. Despite the perception that the generals in World War II knew what they were doing and the Generals in World War I didn’t, the casualties and casualty rates in World War II were just as bad if not worse than in World War I. The difference was that most of them happened on the Eastern Front, and so the U.S. did not suffer them (for the most part).
By the end of World War I, the armies on all sides had figured out how to fight effectively, though the casualties remained high.
The Civil War was our precursor to that, and just as sanguinary. One of the major reasons why the CSA was more effective early on in the war was that the lion’s share of Regular Army officers from the pre-war era joined the CSA, leaving the Union short of an effective cadre to expand around. As the Union officers began to gain experience, the imbalance started to disappear. But Robert E. Lee was a better maneuverer than any of the Union Generals. Only Grant was smart enough to realize that (though even he backslid), and turned to hammering Lee’s army until it broke under the strain. It wasn’t pleasant, but as someone said, winning excuses a lot of things.
The key was to be on the strategic offensive (thus invading the enemy’s territory) but the tactical defensive (thus making the enemy army attack you).
January 19, 2008 at 9:48 am
eric
Are there particular texts that you consider essential to understanding the history of the war, socially and as it progressed?
This is one of those cases where the award-winning and acclaimed book is actually also a good one: James McPherson, Battle Cry of Freedom.
Which is not to say that experts don’t quibble. But still.
January 19, 2008 at 9:51 am
silbey
“Ah, history is written by the victors”
Interestingly, in this case, it wasn’t, at least at first. Many of the historians who wrote about the Civil War in the post-war period were Southern (the Shelby Footes of their day).
Good current books to read on the war are:
James MacPherson, _Battle Cry of Freedom_
MacPherson, _For Cause and Comrade_
Mark Grimsley, _The Hard Hand of War_
Anything by Gary Gallagher (and there’s a lot)
Anything by Joseph Glatthaar
January 19, 2008 at 9:58 am
eric
I should add that when I took the Civil War in college, from a Professor Silbey (not this one), I remember the reading list including
Roark, The Ruling Race
Silbey (again, not this one, but the same one teaching the course), The Partisan Imperative
Potter, The Impending Crisis
Foner, Reconstruction
Which remain pretty good. I have since used
Oakes, Slavery and Freedom
Silbey, American Political Nation
as well. Potter still good, I think.
January 19, 2008 at 10:00 am
Megan
Thank god I’ve got a big strong man historian to explain rifling to me. Else I’d hardly know how to draw the force diagram.
January 19, 2008 at 10:35 am
ari
Who said anything about big and strong? I’m both tiny and meek. In body and mind.
January 19, 2008 at 10:48 am
ari
Not to mention spirit. “Kelman? A bit small-spirited, no?” I heard that all the time, uttered as the captains passed me over when picking teams for kickball. Which sport, I’m told, is making a big comeback. For adults. I think that would be fun.
January 19, 2008 at 10:54 am
ari
Also, Megan, I should probably note — just for the record — that in addition to kidding around with B, I was also nodding at the way that discussions of the Civil War so quickly turn to traditionally masculine issues: like military hardware. When, in fact, there’s so much more to talk about — thus a ten-week course in which battles are only mentioned for a small fraction of the time.
January 19, 2008 at 11:06 am
Megan
Oh, I knew you were kidding around. it is just that I like to be the butch engineer in blog comments.
I didn’t catch your second meaning, that discussions of the Civil War rapidly turn to traditionally masculine issues. It is good to have that made explicit so I can notice it next time.
January 19, 2008 at 11:17 am
ari
You are, now and forever, the butch engineer in our blog comments. Elsewhere, too, I think, though there could be other Megans who are butch engineers. It’s hard to say.
Speaking of butch, my wife is outside right this very moment picking up a huuuuuge rat that our neighbor’s cat left by our back door. The joys of living in NorCal. She (my wife, not the rat or the cat or any other creature living in or wearing a red-striped hat) is pretty unhappy with me, I should add. Because I’m sitting on the couch having a weird muscle spasm thing in my back. I can’t really move or help with the rat. I’m quite the hothouse flower. Like I said: meek.
January 19, 2008 at 11:22 am
bitchphd
We should totally form a California kick ball team. Who’s with me?
January 19, 2008 at 11:37 am
Megan
Yeah, yeah, same Megan.
Kickball sounds fun.
January 19, 2008 at 2:02 pm
ari
I’m in. I just hope I get picked. And then don’t get hurt. Maybe I should stay home and read instead.
January 19, 2008 at 3:21 pm
bitchphd
What kind of crappy attitude is that? If you’re in, you’re in. And I expect you not to skip practice, either.
January 19, 2008 at 3:26 pm
sysrick.com » links for 2008-01-19
[…] Shorter Civil War: Union Wins, Many Die […]
January 19, 2008 at 7:23 pm
charlieford
Allen Guelzo’s bio of Lincoln, Redeemer President, is very much worth reading, too.
January 19, 2008 at 7:42 pm
Noah W.
Forgive me if I sound like I’m rambling. Ok. So.
Unlike the American Civil War, World War One was a war of attrition. Yes, many people lost there lives in the Civil War, however, during WWI or The Great War, This loss of life seemed to have brought no real victory in the sense of life lost per every mile of ground covered. For Example: The Battle of the Somme in 1917 took the lives of over one million men in a period of five months. On the first day alone, the British lost nearly 60,000 men. By the end of the battle, only 25 miles of ground was covered. This works out to be close to 80,000 soldiers killed for every mile covered. And to put things in perspective, as compared to the life lost in the entire Civil War, nearly twice the amount of people lost their lives in that single battle alone.
Why? Technology. The Civil war was some what of a catalyst for weapons technology. We went from, smooth bore percussion muskets to repeating (or ripid fire rifles), and even The “Gattling” Guns in a period of 4 years. As well as numerous types of new artillery and ballistics. These weapons were so new, that millitary tacticians really didn’t know how they could be used in combat effectivly. Nor did they have the time to design tactics or train soldiers to use these tactics; they had a war to fight. So they stuck with their conventional ways. It wouldn’t be until WWI that tacticians had a real chance to test the use of this modern weaponry. The outcome proved to be futile.
January 19, 2008 at 8:35 pm
charlieford
Noah, is there a specific point you’re trying to make? I’m getting lost in your details–what’s it all add up to?
Also, a bit of a quibble: it seems to me that the Civil War was (at least in part, and more towards the end than the beginning) a war of attrition, as most wars tend to be in the modern era. Washington had shown (and I’m sure he wasn’t the first–who was?) that having the enemy capture your major cities didn’t spell defeat if tyou could keep an army on the field.
The Mexicans, after a fashion, turned the same rule to our disadvantage in our war with them.
Still, armies are hidebound and dedicated to tradition, much to their discomfit, and in the Civil War the capturing the enemy’s capital or major cities was a goal and was useful. But in the end, making him bleed to a point he could no longer tolerate was the strategy, I believe.
Lucky for us, Robert E. Lee was no Ho Chi Minh. Though Davis may have been, if given the chance.
January 19, 2008 at 9:09 pm
CharleyCarp
The point of McClellan’s Peninsular Campaign near the outset was to take Richmond, and they got close enough to see the church spires. Then the Rebs threw them back in the Seven Days battles.
Early’s attempt on Washington later in the war wasn’t nearly as serious. They did get into the city limits in some places (not where I live, though: a trench passing through my yard just outside DC was held by Pennsylvanians against advancing Alabamans).
January 19, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Nora Bombay
This was really neat. I’ve studied the war, but to have it all layed out in such a grapical fashion made the parts come together in a way they had not.
And despite living in N.Virgina for most of a decade, I forget how much of the war was fought in practically my backyard….
January 19, 2008 at 11:01 pm
paulbeard
I think Noah’s point is that the War Between the States was a proving ground for WWI. I’ve heard that argument before, but there are 50 years between the two events and I’m not sure many European military analysts looked at how the Late Unpleasantness was conducted to draw lessons from it. Didn’t France and Germany have their own dustup on the 1870s? Did they use anything from the American Civil War?
As for the technology for mechanized impersonal slaughter making its first appearance in that timeframe, I think that’s accurate enough, but I think the World Wars made the most of it (and the Spanish Civil War which was a proving ground for WWII).
And the numbers in the video suggest that attrition was part of the strategy: throwing soldiers at the enemy works, if you have ’em (cf Vietnam).
January 19, 2008 at 11:24 pm
ari
The problem with the video, if there is one, is that it so disconnects the numbers from the politics on the homefront. When, actually, politics drove those numbers. And vice versa. One loses sight of what happened after Antietam (the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation) or the fall of Atlanta (Lincoln’s reelection). Or how the numbers shoot up in the spring and summer of 1864, as Grant tries anything to generate good news to bolster Lincoln’s sagging electoral prospects. Still, I’ve now watched this thing at least a dozen times, and I still find it incredibly affecting
January 20, 2008 at 8:34 am
silbey
“Unlike the American Civil War, World War One was a war of attrition.”
As Ari has already pointed out, the Civil War had essentially become a war of attrition by 1864-65.
“This loss of life seemed to have brought no real victory in the sense of life lost per every mile of ground covered.”
As I pointed out earlier, the casualty rates in WWII are similar to WWI. Second, defining “real victory” simply in terms of ground won strikes me as very difficult to defend. Even if you accept that, though, by the end of the war, both sides had figured out how to gain ground as the Germans demonstrated in March of 1918, and the French and British in August-November 1918 (the Americans did not perform particularly well, despite the legend).
“For Example: The Battle of the Somme in 1917 took the lives of over one million men in a period of five months. On the first day alone, the British lost nearly 60,000 men.”
Minor nitpick: The Battle of the Somme was in 1916. You may be thinking of Passchendaele in 1917.
“And to put things in perspective, as compared to the life lost in the entire Civil War, nearly twice the amount of people lost their lives in that single battle alone.”
I think you’re conflating casualties with dead. The casualties at the Somme were over 1 million by the end of 1916, but that includes wounded. The dead at the Somme numbered about 300,000 by the end of 1916, still unbelievably horrible, but less than half the total in the Civil War (600,000 or so).
Also, you have to compare the number of dead to the overall size of the population, and once you do that, the dead and wounded in the Civil War compares to that in World War I.
“Technology”
I wouldn’t overwrite the role of technology in this. It’s certainly a major part of it, but so is the rising nationalism that enabled mass armies to fight effectively, so was industrialization, which allowed the production and supply of those mass armies. Military historians have, in the past, tended to fall into an obsession with technology and ignored larger social and cultural factors, and we should avoid doing this with WWI.
“The outcome proved to be futile”
I’m not sure that’s true. One side pretty clear won the war, and one side pretty clearly lost. It ended in four years, about the same amount of time as the Civil War. That the victorious side blew the peace process is not really a statement about the war itself.
January 20, 2008 at 8:42 am
CharleyCarp
“That the victorious side blew the peace process is not really a statement about the war itself.”
Well, we did have to have a do-over on Reconstruction nearly 100 years later. Not as bad as WWII, in terms of do-overs, but not as effective either . . .
January 20, 2008 at 8:44 am
CharleyCarp
Am I the only one for whom the comments, and names of commenters, are substantially disconnected? Is it because I’m using IE?
January 20, 2008 at 10:32 am
charlieford
I think pride and tradition kept European strategists from paying much attention to the American Civil War. Heck, even Americans didn’t entirely learn from it: a simple thing like changing the uniform color to one that would blend a bit into the landscape was considered a degenerate breach with tradition and un-manly when it was finally pushed through after the Spanish-American War. But Civil War sharpshooters had already discovered its felicity.
So, when you look at pictures from the end of the Civil War, you see men in mud, getting down below ground into trenches. Pictures from the beginning of WWI show idiots up on horses in hats with plumes and bright colored sashes and insignia all over them. Time and experience.
And yes, the comments have been a mess for me for about two weeks now.
January 20, 2008 at 11:51 am
silbey
“I think pride and tradition kept European strategists from paying much attention to the American Civil War.”
They did pay a certain amount of attention to it. All the major European powers sent observers over to watch the battles, and those observers wrote reports. They also paid attention to the Prussian wars of the 1860s and the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-05. The lessons they took from that were that offensives could succeed, albeit with heavy casualties. That wasn’t an unreasonable lesson to learn, but it proved to be inaccurate by the time WW I rolled around.
January 20, 2008 at 12:32 pm
ari
Sorry about the comments. We really are working on it. Though the easy solution, adopting a new, and hideous, template for the blog, just doesn’t work for us. Again, we’ll keep working on it. And if a long-term fix seems impossible, we’ll uglify this place in service of easier discussions. Thanks for your patience.
January 20, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Noah W.
Charileford, What can I say? I learned a few lessons today: 1. Think about the point I am trying to convey. 2. Make sure to have all the information correct and/or proof read (1917 was a typo, Honest!). 3. Know that if I make a statement, that I should be able to defend it. (In which case, I don’t want to even try! I’ll just stick my foot in my mouth even more than it already is!)
I am not the best at converting my thoughts into words. So, thank you for your arguments. I really do benifit from this experiance.
January 20, 2008 at 6:54 pm
charlieford
No problem. Nobody’s perfect.
January 20, 2008 at 6:55 pm
charlieford
But also, Noah, just curious: what are your thoughts in before they’re converted into words?
January 20, 2008 at 7:11 pm
Noah W.
Good question! That is a rather abstract idea… peoples thoughts being words!? Huh!
Lets just say I was never good at writing. Period. I find difficult to protrait my thoughts in a manner in which is concise and to the point. Also, in a manner in which others can make sense of. Make sense? Probably not. So, with this said, I will leave the writing to others. From this point on, I will just observe.
January 20, 2008 at 7:20 pm
charlieford
Oh, golly!
January 21, 2008 at 9:06 am
A R Teschner
Why is it that I need to see the combined total reach a million before I start to feel this chill of utter horror creeping up the sides of my face. I guess I’ve read and seen enough about the civil war to know that these things happened, but to have nothing but casualties and territory makes a void in my gut. I watched this shortly before going to bed, and heard that song in my head until I went to sleep.
January 21, 2008 at 10:11 am
Paul Harvey
Terrific — going to use it in opening day of class “Civil War and American Culture” tomorrow.
January 21, 2008 at 2:01 pm
How we think into writing. « The Edge of the American West
[…] 21, 2008 in meta by eric Commenter charlieford asked, “just curious: what are your thoughts in before they’re converted into […]
January 26, 2008 at 11:37 am
BEW
Ari,
It looks like this video is no longer available on You tube due to copyright problems.
BEW
January 26, 2008 at 11:53 am
charlieford
Btw, anyone looking for a debate about Lincoln where a pretty far-right conservative historian takes down an utterly wacko neo-confederate wing-nut economist, you could do worse than this:
http://www.independent.org/events/transcript.asp?eventID=9
January 26, 2008 at 12:16 pm
ari
BEW, thanks for letting me know. I’m really sorry about. It was nice while it lasted.
March 4, 2008 at 10:42 pm
paulbeard
+1(million) on The Battle Cry of Freedom. I’m convinced we never studied American history in my school days: I think we may have stumbled through to Jackson and the spoils system, but I learned a heckuva lot more from this book.
Thanks for the recommendation.
And people say slavery was incidental or unrelated to the Civil War, why?
February 2, 2009 at 9:49 am
colbey
i nedd to know what wars union won
February 2, 2009 at 10:39 am
Ahistoricality
I know this is late, but “colbey”‘s comment brought me here and I got to read the Independent Institute trascript recommended by charlieford: great fun!
And it does relate, oddly, to the federal authority v. property rights debate we’re having now: the overlap of neo-confederate and new deal denialist populations is pretty stark….