A Short Walk through Our Long History Clayton Mills

At the same time that Sherman was burning his way through Georgia, but avoiding major battles, Grant was up in Virginia, trying to provoke major battles.  In March of 1864, Lincoln had put Grant in charge of all the Union armies.  General Meade was still the commander of the Army of the Potomac, so Grant took Meade and together they headed into Virginia to try to defeat Robert E Lee.  Grant’s goal was to draw Lee into a huge battle, and destroy the Army of Northern Virginia. 
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The Union victory at the Battle of Antietam, well, the draw at Antietam that forced the South to stop their invasion of the north, was seen as a huge victory in the north, even though the actual battle that day was a draw.  Both armies basically left the field shattered, but since McClellan didn’t follow up and crush what was left of Lee’s army, the Confederates were able to get back to Virginia, and reorganize.  And guess what?  They will be back.  Lee’s going to invade, again, soon, and that’s going to take us to a battle that was even bigger and bloodier than Antietam.  

But first we need to head west, to the Mississippi, and back to our one Union general with a winning record, Ulysses S Grant.  
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The war has been going pretty well for the south at the mid point of 1862, but the south has less men, less guns, less cannons, less of almost everything.  Less manufacturing capacity, for sure.  But time is sort of on the South’s side.  The longer that the Confederacy exists as its own country, the more people are likely to just accept it that way.  And the longer the war drags on, especially if the North keeps losing, the more likely the Northern public is to stop supporting the war.  Again, kind of like it was in the Revolutionary war, the South doesn’t have to win, necessarily, it just needs to not lose, or at least not lose catastrophically, and it will keep existing.  The North, on the other hand, needs to win decisively.  

And they haven’t done that yet, they haven’t really beaten and destroyed a Southern army, even though they won a few battles. The South is still fielding competent armies, and still continuing to exist.  The North really needs a big win, to change the momentum of the war, and to change public opinion.  

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At this point, in late 1861, the war is not going well for the Union.  The early battles of the Civil War were mostly Union defeats, or at least draws where the Rebel army got away.  There were not any definitive victories, that’s for sure.  And because of that, the Confederacy still existed.  It was sort of like the American strategy during the Revolutionary war - as long as General Washington and the Continental Army still existed, the British hadn’t won.  Similarly, as long as the Confederacy still existed, the Union had not won.  And this gave hope to the Confederates, and frustrated the people of the Union.  

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Last episode, we talked about the revolutions in Europe in 1848.  The United States is about to have a revolution, I mean, another one, at least from a certain point of view.  From another point of view, it’s a rebellion.  But we aren’t quite there yet.  

In the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus is accused by the Pharisees of driving out demons using the power of Satan.  And Jesus, in a masterful double entendre, replies, ‘Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation, and every city or house divided against itself shall not stand.’  A house that is internally divided, he’s saying, will not stand, it will collapse.  Jesus’ point was that if he was driving out demons by the power of Satan, well, that satanic house would be divided, and it would collapse.  But he’s also making the point that the house of Judaism, the house of the Pharisees, is also divided, as many people in Judea had begun to follow Jesus, but the Pharisees had not.  The house was divided.  

And much later, in 1858, Abraham Lincoln, running for the US Senate, said, quoting Jesus, “A house divided against itself cannot stand.  I believe this government cannot endure, permanently half slave and half free.  I do not expect the Union to be dissolved – I do not expect the house to fall – but I do expect it will cease to be divided.  It will become all one thing or all the other.”  

Well, here we are, at war.  Sort of.  Shots were fired at Fort Sumter, but no one was actually killed in the battle.  But now the battle lines are being drawn.  Lincoln has asked for more volunteers, and the border states of Arkansas, Missouri, Tennessee, and most importantly, Virginia, have chosen to leave the Union, rather than provide troops that would be used to attack the south.  

So both sides begin putting together armies.  A lot of men volunteered initially, in part because they thought that this wasn’t going to take long.  Lincoln’s request for new volunteers, for example, was only for a 90 day enlistment.  People in both the North and the South felt like this war would be over in only a few months.  Both sides overestimated their own battle prowess, and felt like they would be able to ‘whip’ the other side pretty easily.  But even more than that, both sides seriously underestimated the other side’s resolve to fight.  

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