Creating an Army from Scratch

The following pictures should give you an idea of the war's ability to "make" and "unmake" people as well as institutions. The war represented a tremendous problem, but with this trouble came incredible opportunity. Many of the fundamental questions in American history for the rest of the 19th Century were in some way settled by the way fate intervened in lives of the Civil War generation in 1861-62.

Leading an army: A portrait of youth.

George Brinton McClellan - made General in Chief of the United States Army. Prior military training: extensive.
Age in 1861: 35

Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. - (future legendary Associate Justice of the Supreme Court) as a young lieutenant in the Union Army. Prior military training: none.
Age in 1861: 20 (just barely)

Ulysses S. Grant - Future commander of the Union Army and President. Prior military training: substantial.
Age in 1861: 39

John B. Gordon - Major General in the Confederate Army. Enlisted as Captain, promoted by 1862. Prior military training: none
Age in 1861: 29

Not everybody was young, including political generals (the early) bane of both armies:

Leonidas Polk, the "Fighting Bishop." Kin of James K. Polk, Friend of Jeff Davis, appointed to high command despite no military experience - Was a graduate of USMA 1827. Killed outside Kennesaw Mountain, Georgia in 1864 at age 58

It is not hard to believe that Nathaniel P. Banks might one day have been President had he been at least a competent and effective general, but he was not. This former Speaker of the House became a political general at age 45, at the beginning of the war:

Both North and South had to construct armies essentially from scratch.

What were some of the considerations that the leadership had to take into consideration?
There were certainly tangible issues such as how one might pay for the war. Then there is the question of just how long the war was going to be and to what degree you were ready to disrupt your society. How many men, for instance, should stay home to keep a nation's economy operating.


We read about how McClellan ordered Hardee's Tactics printed for his inexperienced officers, but there were a lot of factors to consider that weren't going to be solved with readily available (if out of date) books.

Not only did few men have military experience of any kind, though frontiersmen North and South and slave patrol personnel in the South had some useful skills in human combat. But what of supplying an army that was larger than anything anyone had ever seen before? Who knew how to feed 15,000 ... 20,000... 100,000 men in the field, keep them moving, etc.? This required a great deal of managerial skill, and this tended to favor the captains of business in the North - if only they occupied those positions.

Some approximate figures:

Size of the Armies: Union
Jan. 1, 1861 - present for duty:  14,663
Jan. 1, 1862 - present for duty: 527,204 


Confederate Forces:

Jan. 1, 1862 - present for duty: approx. 260,000

Moreover, think about something like medicine. How many doctors will a nation need? The answer was going to become clear: far more than either nation possessed. And these doctors had limited notion of the causes of infection. No wonder so many soldiers died of causes such as "camp fever."

How many engineers and manufacturers would need to be dedicated to the war effort? And again, you see that the North has a comparably large advantage. Consider again the "mechanic's' republic" as demonstrated by the daguerreotypes in the first lecture. 

In Escott, you will read about Jefferson Davis's plans to supply his nation's war effort, and how radical they were, particularly in light of the South's supposed "states' rights" ideology. In light of the North's war making ability, was there any other viable choice?

Yet all of this discussion of the tangible does not tell the whole story. The United States, the world's most technologically advanced nation in the 1960s, ultimately foundered and withdrew from its involvement in Vietnam.

How important (and how strong) was the Northern commitment to Union? Did this exist in separation from the issue of slavery? Was the North truly united and could it stay united. Moreover, what did the North have to accomplish in order to declare true victory?