Committee of Scope and Sequence (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} homeworking) wrote,@ 2004-09-27 17:56:00 |
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Was the Civil War unique in its time, and was it different from conflicts of other periods?
Why did war grow to include an assault on economic infrastructure? Was this new?
Did the techniques of the Civil War represent a step forward or backward?
Did both sides engage in "total war"?
What does the word "modern" mean? Is it limited to modern warfare, or does it encompass modern government (see T. Harry Williams) and possibly modern society as a whole?
Following the Peace of Westphalia, "Europe was to enjoy for more than two centuries a period that, if not entirely peaceful, was at least marked by a sophistication of treatment toward the noncombatant that had rarely if ever been evidenced. Even the dynastic upheaval of the Napoleonic Era could not disrupt the steady progress made in shielding the civilian from the worst ravages of warfare. The eighteenth and nineteenth centuries witness the high-water mark of noncombatant immunity. It seems fitting that the developments during these centuries should be ratified precisely at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth with the Hague Conventions of 1899 and 1907. For the civilian there was never a better time." 103
With some exceptions:
The French Revolution's idea of democracy "became a slogan tolling the destruction of the ancien regime, of the entire European political system that had for a century effectively made war relatively safe for the civilian. With the French Revolution came conscription, a return to the armed horde, the levee en masse, in the eyes of more than one commentator, a return to the total warfare of primitive times." 111
Does revolution lead to total war? Was the US CW a "revolutionary experience"? Hartigan links the resurgence of all-consuming conflict to the ideologizing of war. Gone were jockeying moments like America's war with Mexico or the tit-for-tat of European power struggles, and in their place appeared war-with-an-idea, in which one worldview seeks to exterminate and replace another. France's democratic revolution pitted against the ancien regime, Northern industrialism versus Southern slave society, and eventually American capitalism attacking world communism. "The self-confidence of ideology has remained constant since man became ideologic," Hartigan wrote. 112
"One conflict during this period stands out as a predictable exception to this pattern: the American Civil War, predictably different precisely because it was that most uncontrollable of human conflicts, a war within the polity. Conscription, ideology, and technology conjoined to kill more Americans than have died in all of America's foreign wars combined." 113
If total war is defined strictly as warfare that indiscriminately kills both civilian and soldier alike, then few historians would use this word for the Civil War. Neely took this position and refused to apply the label, reserving it for horrors that directly targeted noncombatants, like the firebombing of Tokyo in World War II. As the list of titles with the phrase attests, however, many historians have seen fit to apply the word to the American Civil War, for a more expansive definition does exist. Total war may be construed as a military effort that engages much more a society than a professional army and a munitions industry alone, legally obligating men to fight, pressing citizens into vast war activities on the homefront, and deliberately molding public opinion. For the enemy in a "total war" of this kind, both the economic infrastructure and, more importantly, the ideological basis of the society became legitimate and necessary targets. While Neely may rightly insist that this falls short of the definition, such a war is undoubtedly "fuller" or nearer to "total" than mere squabbles over territory or trade relations that preceded it.
This, in a chapter called "The Maturity of an Illusion." Hartigan regards it as illusive because war inevitably hurts civilians? Or because the twentieth century was to overturn the notion with a vengeance?
A choice between carpetbombing and starvation leads to death in either case.
Chapter 7: "A Strategy of Annihilation"
"The most important specific meaning which the phrase 'remorseless revolutionary struggle' could imply in the Civil War was the possible elimination of slavery, with all the immense corollaries that such a step might entail... In the proclamation of April 15, 1861, in which he called for troops to suppress rebellion, he promised to wage a limited war, engaging in no unnecessary punishment and destruction..." 133
- Lincoln wanted the war over fast, to minimize bitterness and the chance of indefinite guerilla warfare. He tried to keep control of things, assure N and S were friends and brothers, and limit destruction. McClellan embraced L's idea that r.r.s. must be prevented. The idea is to exercise restraint in order to persuade the S reincorporation would be a good idea.
"The Napoleonic mania for the climactic battle" 135
"If the total submission of the enemy had to become an object of war, Sherman's design for pursuing the object by attacking the enemy's resources and will could well appear preferable to Grant's method of destroying the enemy armies by direct means, a process almost certain to cost heavy casualties among one's own soldiers. When a new technology of war, offered by the internal combustion engine in the airplane and the tank, seemed to promise new ways of invoking Sherman's strategy, then its appeal rose especially high." 152
"If the conduct of the Civil War had prepared the United States Army to employ a strategy of annihilation, sometimes with frightful literalness, in its wars against the Indians, the strategy was much in harmony with post-Civil War national policy. Hitherto, in the dealings of the United States with the Indian nations a considerable amount of temporizing had always been possible. Until the time of the Civil War, the conscious purpose of the United States government in its relations with the Indian nations was not to eliminate them but to move them, out of territory desirable to the white man and into lands where the white man was not yet ready to venture, or where it was assumed he would never settle." 153
- Is the planned destruction of the buffalo the equivalent of the annihilation of southern economic infrastructure during the Civil War?
- Many of the military leaders in the CW had experience in Indian fighting more than other types of combat. Does Weigley identify this activity as a precedent for CW tactics, or is the CW total war just a harbinger of later Indian strategy?
Weigley and Hartigan cast the total war philosophy of the CW as an antedecent of things to come - late nineteenth century Indian wars on one hand, and the world wars of the twentieth century on the other.
total war and more: bibliography
Raymond Aron, The Century of Total War, 1955
Christopher Brassford, Clausewitz in English: The Reception of
Clausewitz in Britain and America, 1815-1945
James Dawes, Language of War: Literature and Culture in the U.S.
from the Civil War Through World War II, 2002.
The militant South, 1800-1861. John Hope Franklin 1956.
Daniel L. Lykins, From Total War to Total Diplomacy: The Advertising
Council and the Construction of the Cold War Consensus, 2003.
James M. McPherson, Drawn with the Sword: Reflections on the
American Civil War, 1996.
Fletcher Pratt, America and Total War, 1941
John Bennett Walters, Merchant of Terror: General Sherman and Total
War, 1973.
Stig Forster and Jorg Nagler, On the Road to Total War: The American
Civil War and the German Wars for Unification, 1861-1871, 1997.
Yasushi Yamanouchi et al, eds. Total War and 'Modernization', 1998.
Altars of Sacrifice: Confederate Women and the Narratives of War Drew Gilpin Faust
The Journal of American History, Vol. 76, No. 4. (Mar., 1990),
pp. 1200-1228.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0021-8
Battlesword and Rapier: Clausewitz, Jomini, and the American
Civil War Joseph L. Harsh
Military Affairs, Vol. 38, No. 4. (Dec., 1974), pp. 133-138.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-3
Preserving the "Habits and Usages of War": William Tecumseh
Sherman, Professional Reform, and the U.S. Army Officer Corps,
1865-1881, Revisited Mark R. Grandstaff
The Journal of Military History, Vol. 62, No. 3. (Jul., 1998),
pp. 521-545.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-3
Shutting the Gates of Mercy: The American Origins of Total War,
1860-1880 Lance Janda
The Journal of Military History, Vol. 59, No. 1. (Jan., 1995),
pp. 7-26.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-3
Abraham Lincoln, John Pope, and the Origins of Total War Daniel E. Sutherland
The Journal of Military History, Vol. 56, No. 4. (Oct., 1992),
pp. 567-586.
Stable URL:
http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0899-3
John W. Brinsfield, "The Military Ethics of General William T. Sherman," in The Parameters of Military Ethics, ed. Lloyd J. Matthews and Dale E. Brown, with an introduction by Colonel Harry G. Summers, Jr. 1989
Russell F. Weigley, The American Way of War, 1973
Attack and die [electronic resource] : Civil War military tactics and the Southern heritage / Grady McWhiney and Perry D. Jamieson.
The Forgotten Victim: A History of the Civilian (short book)
Civil War command and strategy : the process of victory and defeat / Archer Jones.
- some comparisons with middle ages, 17th century
