From whatever standpoint one regards it, the American Civil
War presents a spectacle without parallel in the annals of military
history. The vast extent of the disputed territory; the far-flung
front of the lines of operation; the numerical strength of the
hostile armies, the creation of which hardly drew any support from
a prior organisational basis; the fabulous cost of these armies; the ©
manner of commanding them and the general tactical and
strategic principles in accordance with which the war is being
waged, are all new in the eyes of the European onlooker.

The secessionist conspiracy, organised, patronised and_ sup-
ported long before its outbreak by Buchanan’s administration,
gave the South a head-start, by which alone it could hope to
achieve its aim. Endangered by its slave population and by a
strong Unionist element among the whites themselves, with
two-thirds less free men than in the North, but readier to attack,
thanks to the multitude of adventurous idlers that it harbours—
for the South everything depended on a swift, bold, almost
foolhardy offensive. If the Southerners succeeded in taking
St. Louis, Cincinnati, Washington, Baltimore, and perhaps Philadel-
phia, they might then count on a panic, during which diplomacy
and bribery could secure recognition of the independence of all
the slave states. If this first onslaught failed, at least at the decisive
points, their position must then become worse from day to day,
while the North was gaining in strength. This point was rightly
understood by the men who in truly Bonapartist spirit had
organised the secessionist conspiracy. They opened the campaign
in the corresponding manner. Their bands of adventurers overran

The American Civil War 197

Missouri and Tennessee, while their more regular troops invaded
eastern Virginia and prepared a coup de main* against Washington.
If this coup were to miscarry, the Southern campaign was lost from
a military point of view.

The North came to the theatre of war reluctantly, sleepily, as
was to be expected considering its higher industrial and commer-
cial development. The social machinery there was far more
complicated than in the South, and it required far more time to
get it moving in this unusual direction. The enlistment of
volunteers for three months was a great, but perhaps unavoidable
mistake. It was the policy of the North to remain on the defensive
in the beginning at all decisive points, to organise its forces, to
train them through operations on a small scale and without risk of
decisive battles, and, as soon as the organisation had become
sufficiently strong and the traitorous element had simultaneously
been more or less removed from the army, to go on to an energetic,
unflagging offensive and, above all, to reconquer Kentucky,
Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina. The transformation of
civilians into soldiers was bound to take more time in the North than
in the South. Once effected, one could count on the individual
superiority of the Northern men.

By and large, and allowing for the mistakes that arose more
from political than from military sources, the North acted in
accordance with those principles. The guerilla warfare in Missouri
and West Virginia, while protecting the Unionist population,
accustomed the troops to field service and to fire without exposing
them to decisive defeats. The great disgrace of Bull Run’ was, to
a certain extent, the result of the earlier error of enlisting
volunteers for three months. It was absurd to let raw recruits
attack a strong position, on difficult terrain and having
an enemy scarcely inferior in numbers. The panic, which seized
the Union army at the decisive moment, and the cause of which
has yet to be established could surprise no one who was at all
familiar with the history of people’s wars. Such things happened to
the French troops very often from 1792 to 1795; this did not,
however, prevent these same troops from winning. the battles of
Jemappes and Fleurus, Montenotte, Castiglione and Rivoli.'%° The
only excuse for the silliness of the jests of the European press
with regard to the Bull Run panic is the previous bragging of a
section of the North American press.

The six months’ respite that followed the defeat at Manassas was

utilised to better advantage by the North than by the South. Not
only were the Northern ranks replenished in greater measure than
the Southern ones. Their officers received better instructions; the
discipline and training of the troops did not encounter the same
obstacles as in the South. Traitors and incompetent interlopers
were increasingly removed, and the period of the Bull Run panic
is a thing of the past. The armies on both sides are naturally not
to be measured by the standard of the great European armies or
even of the former regular army of the United States. Napoleon
could in fact train battalions of raw recruits in the depots during
the first month, have them on the march during the second and
during the third lead them against the enemy, but then every
battalion received a sufficient reinforcement of experienced
officers and non-commissioned officers, every company some old
soldiers, and on the day of the battle the new troops were
brigaded together with veterans and, so to speak, framed by the
latter. All these conditions were lacking in America. Without the
considerable amount of people of military experience who had
immigrated to America in consequence of the European revolution-
ary unrest of 1848-49, the organisation of the Union army would -
have required a much longer time still. The very small number of
killed and wounded in proportion to the total of the troops
engaged (usually one in every twenty) proves that most of the
engagements, even the most recent ones in Kentucky and
Tennessee, were fought mainly with firearms at fairly long range,
and that the occasional bayonet charges either soon halted in the
face of enemy fire or put the adversary to flight before it came to
a hand-to-hand encounter. Meanwhile, the new campaign has
been opened under more favourable auspices with the successful
advance of Buell and Halleck through Kentucky and Tennessee.’

After the reconquest of Missouri and West Virginia, the Union
opened the campaign with the advance on Kentucky. Here the
secessionists held three strong positions, fortified camps: Colum-
bus on the Mississippi to their left, Bowling Green in the centre,
and Mill Springs on the Cumberland River to the right. Their line
stretched for 300 miles from west to east. The extent of this line
prevented the three corps from rendering each other support and
offered the Union troops the chance of attacking each individually
with superior forces. The great mistake in the disposition of the
secessionists sprang from their attempt to occupy all the ground.

a From here on the text is practically identical with that of Engels’ article “The
War in America” (present edition, Vol. 18).— Ed.

The American Civil War 189

A single fortified, strong central camp, chosen as the battlefield
for a decisive engagement and held by the main body of the army,
would have defended Kentucky far more effectively. It was bound
either to attract the main force of the Unionists or put them in a
dangerous position, had they attempted to march on, disregarding
so strong a concentration of troops.

Under the given circumstances the Unionists resolved to attack
those three camps one after another, to manoeuvre their enemy
out of them and force him to fight in open country. This plan,
which conformed to all the rules of the art of war, was carried out
with energy and dispatch. Towards the middle of January a corps
of about 15,000 Unionists marched on Mill Springs, which was
held by 10,000 secessionists. The Unionists manoeuvred in a
manner that led the enemy to believe he only had to deal with a
weak reconnoitring body. General Zollicoffer at once fell into the
trap, sallied from his fortified camp and attacked the Unionists.
He soon realised that a superior force confronted him. He fell and
his troops suffered as complete a defeat asthe Unionists at Bull
Run. This time, however, the victory was exploited in quite
another fashion. The defeated army was hard pressed until it
arrived broken, demoralised, without field artillery or baggage, in
its encampment at Mill Springs. This camp was pitched on the
north bank of the Cumberland River, so that in the event of
another defeat the troops had no retreat open to them save across
the river by way of a few steamers and river boats. We find in
general that almost all the secessionist camps were pitched on the
enemy side of the river. To take up such a position is not only
according to rule, but also very practical if there is a bridge in the
rear. In such a case, the encampment serves as the bridgehead
and gives its holders the chance of throwing their fighting forces
at will on both banks of the river and so maintaining complete
command of these banks. Without a bridge in the rear a camp on
the enemy side of the river, on the contrary, cuts off the retreat
after an unsuccessful engagement and compels the troops to
capitulate, or exposes them to massacre and drowning, a fate that
befell the Unionists at Ball’s Bluff on the enemy side of the
Potomac, whither the treachery of General Stone had sent them.'”

When the beaten secessionists reached their camp at Mill
Springs, they at once understood that an enemy attack on their
fortifications must be repulsed or capitulation must follow in a
very short time. After the experience of the morning, they had
lost confidence in their powers of resistance. Accordingly, when
the Unionists advanced to attack the camp next day, they found

that the enemy had taken advantage of the night to cross the
river, leaving the camp, the baggage, the artillery and stores
behind him. In this way, the extreme right of the secessionist line
was pushed back to Tennessee, and east Kentucky, where the mass
of the population is hostile to the slaveholders’ party, was
reconquered for the Union. |

At about the same time—towards the middle of January—the
preparations for dislodging the secessionists from Columbus and
Bowling Green commenced. A strong fleet of mortar vessels and
ironclad gunboats was held in readiness, and the news was spread
in all directions that it was to serve as a convoy to a large army
marching along the Mississippi from Cairo to Memphis and New
Orleans. All the demonstrations on the Mississippi, however, were
merely mock manoeuvres. At the decisive moment, the gunboats
were brought to the Ohio and thence to the Tennessee, up which
they sailed as far as Fort Henry. This place, together with Fort
Donelson on the Cumberland River, formed the second line of
defence of the secessionists in Tennessee. The position was well
chosen, for in case of a retreat beyond the Cumberland the latter
river would have covered its front, the Tennessee its left flank,
while the narrow strip of land between the two rivers was
sufficiently covered by the two forts mentioned above. But the
swift action of the Unionists broke through even the second line
before the left wing and the centre of the first line had been
attacked.

In the first week of February the Unionists’ gunboats appeared
in front of Fort Henry, which surrendered after a_ short
bombardment. The garrison escaped to Fort Donelson, since the
land forces of the expedition were not strong enough to encircle
the spot. The gunboats now sailed down the Tennessee again,
upstream to the Ohio and thence up the Cumberland as far as
Fort Donelson. A single gunboat sailed boldly up the Tennessee
through the very heart of the State of Tennessee, skirting the
State of Mississippi and pushing on as far as Florence in northern
Alabama, where a series of swamps and banks (known by the
name of the Muscle Shoals) prevented further navigation. The fact
that a single gunboat made this long voyage of at least 150 miles
and then returned, without experiencing any attack, proves that
Union sentiment prevails along the river and will be very useful to
the Union troops should they push forward as far as that.

The. boat expedition on the Cumberland now combined its
movements with those of the land forces under generals Halleck
and Grant. The secessionists at Bowling Green were deceived over

The American Civil War 191

the movements of the Unionists. Accordingly they remained
quietly in their camp, while a week after the fall of Fort Henry,
Fort Donelson was surrounded on the land side by 40,000
Unionists and threatened on the river side by a strong fleet of
gunboats. Just as in the case of the camp at Mill Springs and Fort
Henry, the river lay beyond Fort Donelson, without a bridge for
retreat. It was the strongest place the Unionists had attacked up to
the present. The works had been carried out with greater care;
moreover, the place was capacious enough to accommodate the
20,000 men who occupied it. On the first day of the attack the
gunboats silenced the fire of the batteries trained towards the river
side and bombarded the interior of the defence works, while the
land troops drove back the enemy outposts and forced the main
body of the secessionists to seek shelter close under the guns of
their own defence works. On the second day, the gunboats, which
had suffered severely the day before, appear to have accomplished
but little. The land troops, on the other hand, had to fight a long
‘and, in places, hard battle with the columns of the garrison, which
sought to break through the right wing of the enemy in order to
secure their line of retreat to Nashville. However, an energetic
attack by the Unionist right wing on the left wing of the
secessionists and considerable reinforcements received by the left
wing of the Unionists decided the victory in favour of the
assailants. Various outworks had been stormed. The garrison,
pressed back into its inner lines of defence, without the chance of
retreat and manifestly not in a position to withstand an assault
next morning, surrendered unconditionally on the following day.

[IL]?

With Fort Donelson the enemy’s artillery, baggage and military
stores fell into the hands of the Unionists; 13,000 secessionists
surrendered on the day of its capture’; 1,000 more the next day,
and as soon as the advance guard of the victors appeared before
Clarksville, a town that lies further up the Cumberland River, it
opened its gates. Here, too, considerable supplies had been
accumulated for the secessionists.

The capture of Fort Donelson presents only one riddle: the

a Here Die Presse has the editorial note, “Conclusion of yesterday’s feuil-
leton”.— Ed.

flight of General Floyd with 5,000 men on the second day of the
bombardment. These fugitives were too numerous to be smuggled
away in steamers during the night. If certain precautions had been
taken by the assailants, they could not have got away.*

Seven days after the surrender of Fort Donelson, Nashville was
occupied by the Federals. The distance between the two places is
about 100 English miles, and a march of 15 miles a day, on very
bad roads and in the most unfavourable season of the year,
redounds to the honour of the Unionist troops. On receipt of the —
news that Fort Donelson had fallen, the secessionists evacuated
Bowling Green; a week later, they abandoned Columbus and
withdrew to a Mississippi island, 45 miles south. Thus, Kentucky
was completely reconquered for the Union. Tennessee, however,
can be held by the secessionists only if they give and win a big
battle. They are said in fact to have concentrated 65,000 men for
this purpose. Meanwhile, nothing prevents the Unionists from
bringing a superior force against them.”

The leadership of the Kentucky campaign from Somerset to
Nashville deserves the highest praise. The reconquest of so
extensive a territory, the advance from the Ohio to the Cumber-
land in a single month, evidence energy, resolution and speed
such as have seldom been attained by regular armies in Europe.
One may compare, for example, the slow advance of the Allies
from Magenta to Solferino in 1859'%—without pursuit of the
retreating enemy, without endeavour to cut off his stragglers or in
any way to outflank and encircle whole bodies of his troops.

Halleck and Grant, in particular, offer good examples of
resolute military leadership. Without the least regard either for
Columbus or Bowling Green, they concentrate their forces on the
decisive points, Fort Henry and Fort Donelson, launch a swift and
energetic attack on these and precisely thereby render Columbus
and Bowling Green untenable. Then they march at once to
Clarksville and Nashville, without allowing the retreating secession-
ists time to take up new positions in northern Tennessee. During
this rapid pursuit the corps of secessionist troops in Columbus
remains completely cut off from the centre and right wing of its
army. The English papers have criticised this operation unjustly.
Even if the attack on Fort Donelson had failed, the secessionists
kept busy by General Buell at Bowling Green could not dispatch
5 The last two sentences are identical with the corresponding passage in Engels’s
article.— Ed,

The American Civil War 193

sufficient men to enable the garrison to follow the repulsed
Unionists into the open country or to endanger their retreat.
Columbus, on the other hand, lay so far off that it could not
interfere with Grant’s movements at all. In fact, after the Unionists
had cleared Missouri of the secessionists, Columbus became an
entirely useless post for the latter. The troops that formed its
garrison had greatly to hasten their retreat to Memphis or even to
Arkansas in order to escape the danger of ingloriously laying
down their arms.

In consequence of the clearing of Missouri and the reconquest
of Kentucky, the theatre of war has so far narrowed that the
different armies can co-operate to a certain extent along the whole
line of operations and work to achieve definite results. In other
words, for the first time the war is now assuming a strategic
character, and the geographical configuration of the country is
acquiring a new interest. It is now the task of the Northern
generals to find the Achilles’ heel of the cotton states.

Before the capture of Nashville, no concerted strategy between
the army of Kentucky and the army on the Potomac was possible.
They were too far apart from each other. They stood in the same
front line, but their lines of operation were entirely different.
Only with the victorious advance into Tennessee did the move-
ments of the army of Kentucky become important for the entire
theatre of war.

The American papers influenced by McClellan are full of talk
about the “anaconda” envelopment plan. According to it, an
immense line of armies is to wind round the rebellion, gradually
tighten its coils and finally strangle the enemy. This is sheer
childishness. It is a rehash of the so-called cordon system'*? devised
in Austria about 1770, which was employed against the French
from 1792 to 1797 with such great obstinacy and with such
constant failure. At Jemappes, Fleurus and, more especially, at
Montenotte, Millesimo, Dego,”” Castiglione and Rivoli, the final
blow was dealt at this system. The French cut the “anaconda” in
two by attacking at a point where they had concentrated superior
forces. Then the coils of the “anaconda” were cut to pieces one
after another.

In densely populated and more or less centralised states there is
always a centre, with the occupation of which by the enemy the
national resistance would be broken. Paris is a brilliant example.?”'
The slave states, however, possess no such centre. They are
sparsely populated, with few large towns and all these on the
seacoast. The question therefore arises: Does a military centre of

gravity nevertheless exist, with the capture of which the backbone
of their resistance will be broken, or are they, just as Russia still
was in 1812, not to be conquered without occupying every village
and every plot of land, in short, the entire periphery? *”

Cast a glance at the geographical shape of the secessionists’
territory, with its long stretch of coast on the Atlantic Ocean and
its long stretch of coast on the Gulf of Mexico. So long as the
Confederates held Kentucky and Tennessee, the whole formed a
great compact mass. The loss of both these states drives an
enormous wedge into their territory, separating the states on the
North Atlantic Ocean from the States on the Gulf of Mexico. The
direct route from Virginia and the two Carolinas to Texas,
Louisiana, Mississippi and even, in part, to Alabama leads through
Tennessee; which is now occupied by the Unionists. The sole route
that, after the complete conquest of Tennessee by the Union,
connects the two sections of the slave states goes through Georgia.
This proves that Georgia is the key to the secessionists’ territory. With
the loss of Georgia the Confederacy would be cut into two
sections, which would have lost all connection with one another. A
reconquest of Georgia by the secessionists, however, would be
almost unthinkable, for the Unionist fighting forces would be
concentrated in a central position, while their adversaries, divided
into two camps, would have scarcely sufficient forces to put in the
field for a joint attack.

Would the conquest of all Georgia, with the seacoast of Florida,
be required for such an operation? By no means. In a land where
communication, particularly between distant points, depends much
more on railways than on highways, the seizure of the railways is
sufficient. The southernmost railway line between the States on the
Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic coast goes through Macon and
Gordon near Milledgeville.

The occupation of these two points would accordingly cut the
secessionists’ territory in two and enable the Unionists to beat one
part after another. At the same time, one gathers from the above
that no Southern republic is viable without the possession of
Tennessee. Without Tennessee, Georgia’s vital spot lies only eight
or ten days’ march from the frontier; the North would constantly
have its hand at the throat of the South, and, at the slightest
pressure, the South would have to yield or fight for its life anew,
under circumstances in which a single defeat would cut off every
prospect of success.

From the foregoing considerations it follows:

The Potomac is not the most important position in the war

The American Civil War 195

theatre. The seizure of Richmond and the advance of the Potomac
army further south—difficult on account of the many rivers that
cut across the line of march—could produce a tremendous moral
effect. From a purely military standpoint, they would decide
nothing.

The outcome of the campaign depends on the Kentucky army,
now in Tennessee. On the one hand, this army is nearest to the
decisive points; on the other hand, it occupies a territory without
which secession cannot survive. This army would accordingly have
to be strengthened at the expense of all the rest and the sacrifice
of all minor operations. Its next points of attack would be
Chattanooga and Dalton on the Upper Tennessee, the most
important railway junctions of the entire South. After their
occupation, the link between the eastern and western states of
Secessia would be limited to the lines of communication in
Georgia. The further problem would then be to cut off another
railway line, with Atlanta and Georgia, and finally to destroy the
Jast link between the two sections by the capture of Macon and
Gordon.

On the contrary, should the anaconda plan be followed, then,
despite all the successes gained at particular points and even on
the Potomac, the war may be prolonged indefinitely, while the
financial difficulties together with diplomatic complications acquire
fresh scope.